Positioning, Navigation and Timing for Planetary Exploration and Colonization: to the Moon and Beyond

Abstract

With the Artemis program, NASA plans to collaborate with commercial and international partners to land in 2024 human beings on the Moon and then to establish a permanent "base camp” by the end of the decade. Challenges ahead are numerous: the Moon "base camp” will have to meet very stringent requirements in terms of operations, logistics, and safety of life; moreover, a permanent base on the Moon will have to be affordable and sustainable, i.e., its cost will need to be assessed over its life-cycle, under a long term technical, economic, and political perspective. The exploration of the Moon with human and robotic missions and its colonization, through the establishment of a permanent base, will require many vital supporting infrastructures, such as communication networks and positioning, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems.

Keywords

• Positioning
• navigation
• timing
• GNSS
• Moon
• infrastructure