“LuGRE’s groundbreaking success opens the door for future NASA Artemis missions and other space explorations to use GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals. This means they can accurately figure out their position, speed, and time without human help. It’s a huge leap forward for navigation systems on the Moon and Mars!”
this should be pretty huge. think about the various failed landings and such you have seen in the news.:
“Traditionally, NASA engineers use a combination of onboard sensors and Earth-based tracking signals to track spacecraft. LuGRE’s demonstration shows that GNSS signals can autonomously aid navigation, even at the Moon’s distance.”
so this really changes space exploration as or more significant to the reusable rocket stages.
They were only able to receive signals from the bare minimum to achieve a solution (4 GPS and 1 Galileo). Their achieved accuracy was +/- 1.5km and +/- 2m/s. That is good enough in astronomic scales to get you to a planet, but it isn’t going to help failed landings or autonomous landings.
I don’t think there was any new tech involved, just a receiver put on a moon lander to see if it could detect signals. And this won’t really do anything for Mars for two reasons: 1) the signal strength would be too small for any reasonable antenna to detect GPS L1/L5 at Mars distances, and 2) the distance would make the geometry be unusable to trilaterate a solution… think about a triangle where two lengths are 100 million miles and the third length is 100 miles. That is a completely worthless geometry for trilateration of a position solution. Even if we could somehow detect a GPS signal at Mars, best case is we get atomic clock time.
Their achieved accuracy was +/- 1.5km and +/- 2m/s
Which is an improvement in of itself. That improves flying craft navigation to and from the moon into something significantly easier to automate and coordinate between multiple ships, more than ballistic dead reckoning.
Better than ballistic dead reckoning, yes. I’m not sure whether it is better or worse than star trackers plus inertial navigation units at that time scale (INUs drift over time and need to be recalibrated every so often to fix that drift, but I really don’t know how accurate star trackers are for position since I only use them for attitude measurement).
interesting. its not just about the moon:
“LuGRE’s groundbreaking success opens the door for future NASA Artemis missions and other space explorations to use GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) signals. This means they can accurately figure out their position, speed, and time without human help. It’s a huge leap forward for navigation systems on the Moon and Mars!”
this should be pretty huge. think about the various failed landings and such you have seen in the news.:
“Traditionally, NASA engineers use a combination of onboard sensors and Earth-based tracking signals to track spacecraft. LuGRE’s demonstration shows that GNSS signals can autonomously aid navigation, even at the Moon’s distance.”
so this really changes space exploration as or more significant to the reusable rocket stages.
They were only able to receive signals from the bare minimum to achieve a solution (4 GPS and 1 Galileo). Their achieved accuracy was +/- 1.5km and +/- 2m/s. That is good enough in astronomic scales to get you to a planet, but it isn’t going to help failed landings or autonomous landings.
I don’t think there was any new tech involved, just a receiver put on a moon lander to see if it could detect signals. And this won’t really do anything for Mars for two reasons: 1) the signal strength would be too small for any reasonable antenna to detect GPS L1/L5 at Mars distances, and 2) the distance would make the geometry be unusable to trilaterate a solution… think about a triangle where two lengths are 100 million miles and the third length is 100 miles. That is a completely worthless geometry for trilateration of a position solution. Even if we could somehow detect a GPS signal at Mars, best case is we get atomic clock time.
Which is an improvement in of itself. That improves flying craft navigation to and from the moon into something significantly easier to automate and coordinate between multiple ships, more than ballistic dead reckoning.
Better than ballistic dead reckoning, yes. I’m not sure whether it is better or worse than star trackers plus inertial navigation units at that time scale (INUs drift over time and need to be recalibrated every so often to fix that drift, but I really don’t know how accurate star trackers are for position since I only use them for attitude measurement).