GUWAHATI: For the first time in history, NASA successfully received and tracked GPS signals on the Moon, marking a major advancement in space navigation. This achievement was made possible through the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), a collaborative project between NASA and the Italian Space Agency.
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LuGRE was delivered to the Moon aboard Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, which touched down on March 2. Shortly after landing, operators at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center began testing its capabilities. On March 3, LuGRE successfully received signals from Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) satellites, confirming the feasibility of using Earth-based navigation technology on the Moon.
According to NASA, this breakthrough could significantly benefit future Artemis missions and other lunar exploration projects by enabling precise and autonomous navigation. By utilising GNSS signals, spacecraft could determine their position, velocity, and time with greater accuracy.
GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) is a network of satellites that transmit positioning, navigation, and timing data using radio waves. Various global constellations provide these signals, including GPS (United States), Galileo (Europe), BeiDou (China), and GLONASS (Russia).
LuGRE was one of 10 NASA payloads aboard the Blue Ghost lander. Before reaching the Moon, it had already set records in space navigation:
-On January 21, it surpassed the highest altitude GNSS signal acquisition ever recorded, at 210,000 miles from Earth—breaking a record previously held by NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission.
-On February 20, LuGRE reached lunar orbit at 243,000 miles, proving that GNSS signals can extend far beyond Earth's immediate surroundings.
-Once on the Moon, LuGRE achieved a navigation fix at approximately 225,000 miles from Earth.
LuGRE will continue to operate for 14 days, gathering valuable data and paving the way for future missions in cislunar space—the region between Earth and the Moon. This experiment also marks a milestone for the Italian Space Agency, as LuGRE is the first Italian-developed hardware to operate on the Moon.
