The Moon is ‘nearer’, thanks to the Lugre mission carried out by the Italian Space Agency and NASA. From the Moon, in reality, come the first public satellite tv for pc navigation data, collected and disseminated by NASA and Asi. The info, now accessible to the worldwide scientific neighborhood, comes from the Italian-American Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment mission, which ‘demonstrated how the indicators of the GPS and Galileo satellites can be utilized past the Earth’s orbit and on the lunar floor’.
The Italian firm
An vital half was performed by Italy, because it was Qascom, an organization primarily based in Bassano del Grappa, that developed Lugre, an all-Italian instrument made for Asi. It is an ‘progressive instrument that permits the exact measurement of place in house, even in environments very distant from the Earth’. Not solely that, the scientific half was taken care of by the Turin Polytechnic, which supported Asi with a particular centre for processing scientific data. ‘The Software Defined Radio Receiver, designed to work in deep house, could be very delicate to GPS and Galileo indicators,’ reads the undertaking specs, ‘thanks to a particular algorithm that picked up after which processed the very weak indicators throughout the journey to the Moon after which from the lunar floor. The indicators are 10,000 instances weaker than these acquired on Earth and with the extra aggravation of prohibitive geometries.
Experts: “historic step”
For the consultants of the Italian company, it is a ‘historic step for house science and expertise’. ‘For the first time, the navigation indicators we use on Earth have been acquired and analysed on the Moon,’ they write. ‘An achievement that paves the manner for brand new applied sciences for the Artemis missions, which can carry man again to our pure satellite tv for pc.
Lugre was launched in January 2025 aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lander, and acquired GNSS and Galileo indicators, in twin frequency, each throughout the journey to the Moon and as soon as it landed on the floor, “setting new distance records, up to 400,000 kilometres from Earth, and demonstrating that satellite navigation can become a key resource for future lunar missions”.
For the scientific world, it is a new alternative as a result of ‘these outcomes pave the manner for a future during which astronauts, rovers and spacecraft will likely be in a position to use the identical satellite tv for pc navigation techniques that we use each day on Earth, tremendously bettering their skill to orient themselves and function safely on the lunar floor’.