The waxing gibbous moon is nestled in the darkness of space in this June 26, 2026, image from the International Space Station. The space station was 264 miles above the Indian Ocean southeast of Madagascar at the time.
The waxing gibbous phase comes before the full moon phase. During this time, the Moon appears brighter in the night sky to viewers on Earth.
Image credit: NASA
As NASA prepares for a sustained human presence on the Moon, missions will increasingly require spacecraft that can navigate and communicate without a direct connection to Earth.
NASA’s Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, or CAPSTONE, validated and advanced these capabilities.
Designed to test and validate technologies in lunar orbit, CAPSTONE launched in June 2022 and became the first U.S. commercial mission at the Moon. The spacecraft tested operations in three-body orbits around the Moon, using the combined gravity of Earth and the Moon to reduce the fuel needed to maintain a stable lunar path. It became the first spacecraft to fly and characterize this orbit for future exploration and science missions. Owned and operated by Advanced Space, the microwave-sized spacecraft then received a 15-month mission extension, becoming a testbed for advanced communications, networking, autonomous navigation, and software-defined satellite technologies.
Rather than launch a new satellite, NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate demonstrated that CAPSTONE’s existing hardware could host new applications after launch, transforming the spacecraft into a cost-effective, flexible lunar technology demonstration platform. NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Division will now use the data to demonstrate innovative networking and navigation techniques on future experiments.
“Operating multiple experiments simultaneously aboard the same spacecraft allows NASA to evaluate how these technologies perform together in a real lunar environment,” said Greg Stover, director of the Advanced Research and Technology Division within NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Investments in autonomous operations and resilient communications infrastructure are essential to ensuring U.S. leadership as activity around the Moon continues to increase.”
Two experiments aboard CAPSTONE used software-defined infrastructure to advance two future mission essentials: autonomous navigation and deep space communications. The autonomous Navigation, Guidance, and Control software, or autoNGC, is designed to allow a spacecraft to determine where it is, where it is going, and how to get where it needs to be without waiting for instructions from the ground. While portions of the software had previously flown in Earth orbit, CAPSTONE marked the first time autoNGC was tested at the Moon.
“To really demonstrate that something works, you have to fly it,” said Sun Hur-Diaz, principal investigator for the autoNGC technology development project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The real environment is key.”
Sun Hur-Diaz
Principal Investigator for the autoNGC Project, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Researchers also evaluated how autoNGC performed with limited contact to Earth. While NASA’s Deep Space Network antennas were supporting the Artemis II crewed test flight around the Moon, CAPSTONE’s communications window dropped to just a few passes per week.
Those gaps became one of the experiment’s most valuable tests. Without data from Earth, autoNGC determined CAPSTONE’s location using an onboard star tracker camera to image the Moon, Earth, and other celestial bodies. The camera-based system, known as optical navigation, at times outperformed ground-based methods for real-time onboard navigation, advancing technologies for future deep-space missions.
Alongside autonomous navigation testing, CAPSTONE also tested delay/disruption tolerant networking (DTN), a communications architecture designed for deep space. Unlike Earth-based internet systems, deep space communications must function despite long delays and frequent signal gaps. The DTN system addresses those challenges by storing information on the spacecraft when no connection is available and automatically forwarding it once communications are restored. With these demonstrations, CAPSTONE became the first to fly the latest DTN protocols beyond Earth orbit and the first to run them in NASA’s core Flight System, an open-source framework that can be implemented on any spacecraft.
In one demonstration, engineers began transmitting data from CAPSTONE to Earth, but the connection ended before the transfer was complete. The spacecraft stored the remaining data until the next communications opportunity, and transmission resumed automatically. Every piece of data made it home.
“You can imagine an astronaut walking behind a lunar hill or descending into a crater and temporarily losing connectivity,” said Ben Anderson, a systems engineer for the Near Space Network at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “This technology allows that data to be automatically retransmitted once communications are restored.”
In addition to its primary achievements, CAPSTONE’s second life as a software-defined testing platform demonstrated that new technologies can be affordably tested and proven directly in their operational environment.
After nearly four years of technology maturation, NASA’s activities on CAPSTONE concluded in June 2026, while Advanced Space will continue to use the spacecraft as a technology development testbed.
The CAPSTONE spacecraft was designed and built by Terran Orbital and is owned and operated by Advanced Space. NASA’s Research and Technology Mission Directorate managed the mission through the Small Spacecraft and Distributed Systems program, based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley. Elements of the CAPSTONE technology suite were supported by NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program. The autoNGC and DTN demonstrations conducted during CAPSTONE’s extended mission were managed by NASA’s SCaN Division, based at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
Korine Powers, Ph.D. is a writer for NASA's SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program office and covers emerging technologies, commercialization efforts, exploration activities, and more.
A predawn Moon-and-planets meetup, a returning comet, a great chance to see the Milky Way, and Saturn’s rings at a new angle.
An early morning hangout with the Moon and planets, a comet swings by, prime time for the Milky Way, and Saturn’s rings shine at a new angle. That’s What’s Up for July.
Before sunrise on July 11 and 12, look toward the eastern sky for a lineup of the Moon and planets. On these mornings, the waning crescent Moon helps point the way to Mars, with Saturn shining nearby in the morning sky.
Uranus is in the same general part of the sky, too, but it is much fainter, so you will need binoculars or a telescope to see it.
Mars will look like a small reddish point of light, Saturn is brighter and easier to spot, and the Moon makes the whole scene easy to locate.
Around the New Moon on July 14, Comet 10P/Tempel 2 swings by.
This is a short-period comet, meaning it returns to the inner solar system on a regular orbit. In this case, it comes back about every 5½ years. It is not a dramatic comet that you see just by looking up at the sky, though.
Through binoculars or a telescope, find the constellation Capricornus and look for a small fuzzy glow nearby, possibly with a brighter central knot and a short, broad, fan-shaped tail.
For the best chance to view the comet, head somewhere dark, away from city lights. Start looking once the sky is fully dark, ideally about 45 to 60 minutes after sunset.
Those same dark nights around the July 14 New Moon are also the best time this month to look for the Milky Way.
From a dark location, away from city lights, the Milky Way appears as a pale, cloudy band across the summer sky. The bright, cloudy region of the Milky Way marks the direction of the galactic center. It looks so dense because we’re looking toward one of the most crowded parts of our galaxy, where countless stars glow behind dark clouds of cosmic dust.
Late in the evening, look low in the southern sky for a group of stars shaped like a big hook or scorpion tail. That’s Scorpius. The bright, cloudy part of the Milky Way is nearby, close to another group of stars called Sagittarius.
For the best chance to see the Milky Way, go somewhere dark, give your eyes time to adjust, and try not to look at your phone.
Later in July, Saturn is a rewarding target for telescope users.
Saturn’s rings are still tilted at a very shallow angle from our point of view, making them look unusually thin. The rings aren’t disappearing, but how they appear from Earth is changing. It’s a great reminder that our view of the solar system is always in motion.
Here are the phases of the Moon for July.
You can stay up to date on all of NASA’s missions exploring the solar system and beyond at science.nasa.gov. I’m Raquel Villanueva from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and that’s What’s Up for this month.
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