Rocket Lab Electron CAPSTONE June 28th, 2022

These are 1/72 scale decals for the Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle as it appeared on 28 June 2022 during the "CAPSTONE" mission — launched from Rocket Lab's Launch Complex 1 on the Māhia Peninsula, New Zealand, carrying one of the most important pathfinder spacecraft of NASA's Artemis program on its journey to the Moon.

CAPSTONE — the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment — was a small 25-kilogram CubeSat built by Advanced Space on behalf of NASA, designed to validate the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) around the Moon that will serve as the home of the Lunar Gateway, the planned space station that will support Artemis crewed lunar missions. The NRHO is a highly elliptical, energetically stable orbit that brings a spacecraft as close as 1,500 kilometers to the lunar surface at its nearest point and as far as 70,000 kilometers at its farthest — an unusual and complex trajectory that had never been operationally demonstrated before CAPSTONE.

The mission showcased the growing role of small launch vehicles and small satellites in deep space exploration — a mission that in an earlier era would have required a much larger rocket was accomplished by an Electron and a CubeSat. Rocket Lab used its Photon spacecraft bus as an upper stage to propel CAPSTONE on a fuel-efficient ballistic lunar transfer trajectory, a months-long journey to the Moon that traded time for propellant efficiency. CAPSTONE successfully entered its NRHO in November 2022, validating the orbit and paving the way for the Lunar Gateway and future Artemis crewed landings.

A landmark mission connecting Rocket Lab's small launch vehicle innovation to humanity's return to the Moon. Please allow some time for decal printing and shipping.