WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - NASA and the Italian Space Agency made a historic achievement by receiving Earth-based navigation signals on Moon.
The U.S. space agency announced that on Monday, the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment, or LuGRE, became the first technology demonstration to acquire and track GPS signals on the Moon's surface.
The LuGRE payload is a joint effort between NASA and the Italian Space Agency to demonstrate the viability of using existing GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals for positioning, navigation, and timing on the Moon.
The LuGRE payload's success in lunar orbit and on the surface indicates that signals from the GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) can be received and tracked on the Moon. These results mean NASA's Artemis missions, or other exploration missions, could benefit from these signals to accurately and autonomously determine their position, velocity, and time. This represents a steppingstone to advanced navigation systems and services for the Moon and Mars.
'On Earth we can use GNSS signals to navigate in everything from smartphones to airplanes,' said Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for NASA's SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program. 'Now, LuGRE shows us that we can successfully acquire and track GNSS signals at the Moon. This is a very exciting discovery for lunar navigation, and we hope to leverage this capability for future missions.'
The road to the historic milestone began on March 2 when the Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the Moon and delivered LuGRE, one of 10 NASA payloads intended to advance lunar science. Soon after landing, LuGRE payload operators at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, began conducting their first science operation on the lunar surface.
Receiver data began flowing in to the Moon-based mission from two GNSS constellations, the U.S. GPS and European Union Galileo GNSS.
At 2 a.m. EST on March 3, it was official: LuGRE acquired and tracked signals on the lunar surface for the first time ever and achieved a navigation fix - approximately 225,000 miles away from Earth.
The mission will operate for two weeks, providing NASA and the Italian Space Agency the opportunity to collect data in a near-continuous modes. In addition to this record-setting achievement, LuGRE is the first Italian Space Agency developed hardware on the Moon, a milestone for the organization.
The LuGRE payload also broke GNSS records on its journey to the Moon. On January 21, LuGRE surpassed the highest altitude GNSS signal acquisition ever recorded at 209,900 miles from Earth, a record formerly held by NASA's Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission. Its altitude record continued to climb as LuGRE reached lunar orbit on February 20 - 243,000 miles from Earth.
This means that missions in cislunar space, the area of space between Earth and the Moon, could also rely on GNSS signals for navigation fixes.
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