The Moon: Going Where No Satnav Has Gone Before

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

The test version of a unique satellite navigation receiver has been delivered for integration testing on the Lunar Pathfinder spacecraft. The NaviMoon satnav receiver is designed to perform the farthest ever positioning fix from Earth, using signals millions of times fainter than those used by our cellphones or automobiles.

This engineering model of our NaviMoon receiver is the very first piece of hardware to be produced in the context of ESA's Moonlight initiative, to develop dedicated telecommunications and navigation services for the Moon," explains Javier Ventura-Traveset, Head of ESA's Navigation Science Office and managing all ESA lunar navigation activities.

It will be flown aboard the Lunar Pathfinder mission into orbit around the Moon, from where it will perform the furthest satellite navigation positioning fix ever made, at more than 400,000 km away to an accuracy of less than 100 m. This represents an extraordinary engineering challenge, because at such a distance the faint Galileo and GPS signals it makes use of will be barely distinguishable from background noise. This demonstration will imply a true change of paradigm for lunar orbiting navigation."

[...] The washing-machine-sized Lunar Pathfinder is being built as a commercial mission by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, SSTL, in the UK. ESA is funding guest payloads for it including the 1.4 kg NaviMoon receiver that will be accommodated beside the spacecraft's main X-band transmitter that links it with Earth.

[...] In principle this could mean that future missions could navigate themselves to the Moon autonomously using satellite navigation signals alone with no help from the ground."

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