NASA to Test GPS-Like Navigation System at the Moon for the First Time

 

The Apollo 8 mission took three men around the Moon in December 1968, going further than anyone had ever gone before. The largest unknown aspect on such a long expedition was navigation. If the spacecraft's velocity had been even slightly off, it would have collided with the Moon's far side.Fast forward to now, and NASA is once again considering navigation and the issue of safety in preparation for the impending Artemis missions to the Moon. To that purpose, NASA is planning to test a new lunar navigation system that uses signals from Earth's Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), but only in the lunar area. That's something that's never been done before. According to NASA, this experimental payload will be delivered to the Moon by Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lander no later than 2024.

 

 

Satellite constellations that broadcast location, time, and navigation signals from space to Earth's receivers are referred to as GNSS. The GPS system, which is operated by the United States Space Force, is the most widely used GNSS system.The Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), developed in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI), will aim to calculate the first-ever location fixes on the lunar surface as well as during a flight to the Moon.

During its trip to the Moon, LuGRE will receive signals from both GPS and Europe's own GNSS system, Galileo. The receiver will also carry out navigation tests at various altitudes and while in lunar orbit.

The LuGRE receiver will unfurl its antenna and collect data for 12 days, or maybe longer, after Blue Ghost lands on the Moon. The information acquired will be transmitted to Earth and used to construct operational lunar GNSS systems for future lunar missions."We are pushing the envelope of what GNSS was intended to do in this case—that is, expanding the reach of systems built to provide services to terrestrial, aviation, and maritime users to also include the fast-growing space sector," J.J. Miller, deputy director of policy and strategic communications for NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) programme, said in a statement. "This will considerably improve the precision and reliability of what was available during the Apollo missions, as well as provide for more variable equipage and operations scenarios."

LuGRE is part of a larger effort to improve the GNSS's high-altitude capabilities, which have long been relied on by space missions for navigation and timekeeping. The system's reach has grown in recent years to include missions with altitudes ranging from 1,800 miles (2,896 kilometres) to 22,000 miles (35,405 kilometres). NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission employed GPS at an altitude of 43,500 miles (70,000 kilometres) above the Earth in 2016.

 In a statement, Fabio Dovis, LuGRE co-principal investigator of the Italian Space Agency, said, "LuGRE is the latest effort in a long line of missions aiming to expand high-altitude GNSS capabilities." "We've created a ground-breaking experiment that will lay the groundwork for operating GNSS systems on the Moon."