Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost made history on March 2 by successfully landing on the moon’s surface, becoming the first commercial lunar lander to do so. The achievement marked a major milestone in the joint public-private mission with NASA and has significant implications for future Artemis missions.
Accurate navigation will be crucial for astronauts traveling across the moon, but traditional GPS tools are ineffective at such vast distances. One solution is transmitting data from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) to the lunar surface to autonomously measure time, velocity, and position. The Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), one of the projects aboard Blue Ghost, successfully demonstrated this capability.
Before landing on the moon, LuGRE achieved NASA’s record for highest altitude GNSS signal acquisition at 209,900 miles from Earth while traveling to the lunar surface. This record continued to rise during the mission, peaking at 243,000 miles after reaching lunar orbit on February 20.
Currently, NASA relies on a mix of onboard sensors and Earth-based tracking signals to track spacecraft. However, using GNSS data could significantly reduce the need for human operators, as the signals can be autonomously picked up by spacecraft.
“This is like being able to use GPS in your smartphone,” said Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program. “Now, we’ve shown that we can successfully acquire and track GNSS signals at the Moon.”
The LuGRE system will continue collecting information over the next two weeks almost continuously while other tools begin their experiments on Blue Ghost.
Source: https://www.popsci.com/science/blue-ghost-gps-moon