It’s been a wild 48 hours for NASA’s Capstone mission. Following the lunar satellite’s successful launch on Monday, ground control lost contact with the spacecraft shortly after it escaped Earth’s gravity well and separated from its Electron rocket carrier. But after nearly a full day in the dark, NASA announced on Wednesday that its engineers have managed to reopen a line to the 55-pound satellite.
Dubbed, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), this spacecraft will continue to orbit the planet for nearly another week, building up enough momentum to sling it on a trans lunar injection (TLI) route over to the moon. Once the Capstone reaches the moon, it will match the planned path of the Lunar Gateway to verify its highly-elliptical orbit.
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