The CAPSTONE Mission and the Future of Spacecraft Navigation & Autonomy 29 January 2026 | 6–7 p.m. (MT) University of Utah – MEK 3350

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The CAPSTONE Mission and the Future of Spacecraft Navigation & Autonomy

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Presented By: AIAA Utah Section

Spacecraft orbits seemingly trace out beautiful conic shapes in space, but designing these trajectories is only half of the story; knowing where and when a spacecraft is, and how fast it’s moving, is the art and science of spacecraft navigation. Dr. Matthew Givens, a senior space navigation engineer at Advanced Space LLC, will share historical and technical insights from this field as well as some perilous stories from the journey of his company’s flagship space mission, the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment (CAPSTONE), which launched in 2022 and has been orbiting in a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO) near the Moon ever since. CAPSTONE has been a testbed for several autonomous navigation and communication technologies and, in partnership with NASA, has pioneered operations and station-keeping strategies in NRHO for future Lunar Gateway space station.

How do we navigate spacecraft? What challenges are there for future human colonization of the Moon? What technologies are being developed to address these challenges? These and other questions will be the subject of this presentation for the AIAA Utah Section.

About the Speaker: Dr. Matthew Givens
Matthew Givens graduated with a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Utah in 2017. He then completed advanced degrees in aerospace engineering from Utah State University (M.S. 2019) and the University of Colorado Boulder (Ph.D. 2023) before joining the navigation team at Advanced Space. His expertise is in satellite orbit determination, cislunar astrodynamics, and computer vision. He also recently taught a new graduate course at the University of Utah, ME EN 6560 – Introduction to Astrodynamics, in the spring of 2025.

AIAA Utah Section
The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) is the largest professional society for aeronautical and astronautical engineering professionals in the world. The Utah Section seeks to connect, engage, and recognize the best and brightest aerospace engineers across the Beehive State.

Other collaborative partners for this talk include Utah Sections of ASME, IEEE, INCOSE, and the University of Utah Department of Mechanical Engineering.