cislunar / sis-loo-ner / situated between the Earth and the Moon
Rocket Lab, the first private company in the Southern Hemisphere to reach space, has launched a small, moon-bound spacecraft from its New Zealand facility. The company’s Electron rocket— a two-stage launch vehicle capable of delivering a 150-kilogram payload to orbit—is carrying a 55-pound, microwave oven-sized spacecraft called CAPSTONE. CAPSTONE—an acronym for Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment—is the first mission of NASA’s Artemis program, which seeks to return human beings to Earth’s moon.
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