When an Earth-based navigation system successfully tracked a lander on the surface of the moon on March 3rd, the interaction was hailed as a triumph. It was a "first" for the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment, known as LuGRE, a joint project of NASA and the Italian Space Agency. This unprecedented ability to have Earth-based navigation track movements on the moon bodes well for high-altitude explorations such as NASA's planned Artemis missions. Observers view it as a gateway to even more advanced navigation systems which could be applicable to missions headed for Mars.
The contacts between LuGRE and the two navigation systems - GPS and Galileo - achieved success some 225,000 miles from Earth, determining position, velocity, and time autonomously.
This is a first for the Italian Space Agency and a nod to the work of Frank Bauer, KA3HDO, who was a consultant on the LuGRE moon lander package. Frank, the executive director of ARISS, had experimented more than 20 years ago with using the satellite AO-40 to measure the signal strength of the GPS satellite constellation at high altitudes. That experiment was credited with helping improve GPS and its applications -- and experts note that it ultimately led to the ability for such navigation at even higher-earth orbits.