View article

Interest in the Moon has grown significantly over the past few years as NASA works to return astronauts to the lunar surface. Historically, lunar missions have primarily been supported by Earth-based ground stations for communication and radionavigation. However, the quantity and scope of proposed lunar exploration, science, and commercial missions require in-situ infrastructure for continuous communication support and precision navigation services. We propose a lunar surface-based Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) and emergency broadcast pseudolite system as a cost-effective solution to support regional operations over exploration critical areas, and have previously explored architecture design characteristics, defined the pseudolite concept of operations, and identified potential navigation performance. This research is focused on developing a lunar pseudolite testbed with two primary objectives …