As the Artemis campaign takes humanity to the Moon and eventually Mars, NASA is honing its cutting-edge navigation and positioning technologies to guide a new era of lunar exploration.
A technology demonstration helping to pave the way for these developments is the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) payload, a joint effort between NASA and the Italian Space Agency to demonstrate the viability of using existing Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals for positioning, navigation and timing on the Moon.
During its journey during an upcoming delivery to the Moon as part of the NASA program CLPS (Commercial Lunar Payload Services) Under this initiative, LuGRE would demonstrate the acquisition and tracking of signals from the U.S. GPS and European Union Galileo GNSS constellations during transit to the Moon, during lunar orbit, and finally for up to two weeks on the lunar surface itself.
The LuGRE payload is one of the first demonstrations of receiving and navigating GNSS signals on and around the lunar surface, an important step in how lunar missions will access navigation and positioning technology. If successful, LuGRE would demonstrate that spacecraft can use signals from existing GNSS satellites at lunar distances, reducing their reliance on ground stations on Earth for lunar navigation.
Today, GNSS constellations support essential services such as navigation, banking, power grid synchronization, cellular networks and telecommunications. Near-Earth space missions use these in-flight signals to determine critical operational information such as location, speed and time.
NASA and the Italian Space Agency want to expand the boundaries of GNSS use cases. In 2019, the Multi-scale magnetospheric (MMS) The mission broke the world record for the farthest GPS signal acquisition, 116,300 miles from Earth’s surface, almost half of the 238,900 miles separating Earth from the Moon. Now LuGRE could double this distance.
“GPS makes our lives safer and more viable here on Earth,” said Kevin Coggins, NASA deputy associate administrator and manager of the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “As we look to expand humanity beyond our home planet, LuGRE should confirm that this extraordinary technology can do the same for us on the Moon.”
Reliable space communications and navigation systems play a critical role in all NASA missions, providing crucial space-to-Earth connections for crewed and uncrewed missions. Using a mix of government and commercial assets, NASA Networks in near and deep space supporting science, technology demonstrations and human spaceflight missions across the solar system.
“This mission is more than a technological milestone,” said Joel Parker, positioning, navigation and timing policy manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We want to enable more and better missions to the Moon for the benefit of all, and we want to do it with our international partners.”
Joel PARKER
PNT Policy Manager at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
The LuGRE data collection payload combines NASA-led systems engineering and mission management with receiver software and hardware developed by the Italian Space Agency and its industrial partner Qascom – the first Italian-made hardware to operate on the lunar surface.
All data collected by LuGRE is intended to open the door to the use of GNSS for all lunar missions, not just those of NASA or the Italian Space Agency. Approximately six months after LuGRE completes operations, the agencies will release data from its mission to expand public and commercial access to lunar GNSS research.
“A project like LuGRE is not just about NASA,” said Lauren Konitzer, Goddard navigation and mission design engineer at NASA. “This is something we do for the good of humanity. We are working to prove that lunar GNSS can work and we are sharing our findings with the world.
The LuGRE payload is one of 10 NASA-funded science experiments launched to the lunar surface during this delivery as part of NASA’s CLPS initiative. Through CLPS, NASA works with U.S. companies to provide delivery and quantity contracts for commercial deliveries to continue lunar exploration and the development of a sustainable lunar economy. As of 2024, the agency has 14 private partners under contract for current and future CLPS missions.
Demonstrations like LuGRE could lay the foundation for GNSS-based navigation systems on the lunar surface. Connecting these existing systems with new Moon-specific navigation solutions has the potential to define how all spacecraft navigate lunar terrain around the world. The Artemis era.
The payload is the result of a collaborative effort between Goddard Space Flight Center and the Italian Space Agency. Funding and oversight for the LuGRE payload comes from the agency’s SCaN Program Office. It was chosen by NASA as one of 10 research and technology demonstrations funded for delivery to the lunar surface by Firefly Aerospatiale Inca flight as part of the agency’s CLPS initiative.