“Finally, when that’s all coupled with our own radio ranging, we’ll have three points of location data to see how the navigation system could potentially be implemented for something like Moonlight,” adds Cranstoun. “So we’re laying the groundwork for a future Moonlight constellation.”
SSTL’s aim is to become a commercial provider of communications for orbiting lunar spacecraft and landers on any part of the Moon’s surface. “Currently, if you want to get data back, you have to use the either Nasa’s Deep Space Network or Esa’s Estrack network,” Cranstoun says, referring to Europe’s global network of spacecraft-tracking ground stations, “which is getting heavily congested at the moment”.
Within the next few years, a new communications infrastructure will therefore unfold for the Moon from government space agencies and commercial companies. Nasa’s proposed system is LunaNet.
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