NASA’s Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) successfully received global positioning system signals from Earth’s orbit on the Blue Ghost mission. The experiment demonstrates that lunar navigation is crucial for future missions, enabling spacecraft to precisely track their positions and velocities.
The LuGRE instrument tracked communications from the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), a network of satellite-based location technologies that includes GPS. This discovery paves the way for future lunar missions, which will utilize lunar GPS for navigation.
With this new system, spacecraft traveling between Earth and the Moon can accurately track their positions and velocities in real-time. The technology also benefits from reduced labor costs associated with current positioning methods.
LuGRE will continue to test its capabilities over 14 days across a distance of 225,000 miles or 360,000 kilometers. If successful, NASA and Italian Space Agency (ISA) plan to share the technology with other space exploration agencies.
The LuGRE project is part of the Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon by 2027 and establish a long-term base on the lunar surface. The mission marks an important milestone in lunar navigation, highlighting the collaboration between NASA and ISA for future missions.
Source: https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-beams-the-first-gps-signals-to-the-moon