The Capstone spacecraft reached the lunar orbit on Sunday, where it will spend at least six months. This is reported on the NASA website.
The tasks of the device include the calculation of the orbit for the future Gateway lunar station. Its mass is about 25 kg.
NASA announced in the spring of 2019 that the astronaut landing program on the Moon, called Artemis, includes three stages. The first is the launch into space of the Orion spacecraft using the new Space Launch System launch vehicle, which in unpiloted mode will make several orbits around the Moon and return to Earth. The second is a flyby of a natural satellite of the Earth already with a crew on board, which is planned for 2023. At the third stage in 2025, NASA expects to deliver astronauts to the Moon, and then send them to Mars in the mid-2030s.
