Advanced Space

Advanced Space is a Westminster, Colorado-based spacecraft navigation, mission design, and autonomous systems company founded in 2011, specializing in advanced astrodynamics, spacecraft trajectory optimization, and on-orbit navigation services for cislunar and deep space missions — best known for developing the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System (CAPS) and operating NASA's CAPSTONE mission, the first spacecraft to orbit the Moon in the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) planned for the Gateway lunar station.

NASA's CAPSTONE (Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment) is a 12U CubeSat launched aboard Rocket Lab's Electron rocket in June 2022 that traveled to the Moon on a ballistic lunar transfer trajectory and entered the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit in November 2022 — a highly elliptical orbit that passes within 1,500 km of the lunar north pole and extends 70,000 km toward Earth, chosen for the Lunar Gateway station because it provides consistent communications with Earth, good views of the south polar region, and near-constant access to sunlight. Advanced Space serves as the primary mission operator for CAPSTONE, managing navigation, command uplink, and telemetry downlink.

CAPS — the eponymous technology CAPSTONE demonstrates — is an on-orbit navigation system that allows a cislunar spacecraft to determine its own position and velocity through direct communication with another spacecraft (like the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, already operating at the Moon) rather than relying entirely on Earth-based tracking. This peer-to-peer navigation capability could reduce ground station tracking time demands for future lunar missions and enable greater operational autonomy.

Beyond CAPSTONE, Advanced Space provides mission design, trajectory optimization, and navigation analysis services for lunar, Earth-Moon libration point, and interplanetary missions. The company has grown as the cislunar economy has expanded, supporting commercial and government customers planning missions to lunar orbit, the lunar surface, and the L1/L2 libration points. Competitors in spacecraft navigation services include KinetX Aerospace, Analytical Mechanics Associates (AMA), and Emergent Space Technologies.