Nasa uses GPS on the Moon for the first time
Nasa has successfully used GPS navigation on the lunar surface for the first time.
The demonstration, which also involved the Italian Space Agency, is expected to signal a new era of exploration and discovery on the Moon.
Using the Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), the experiment involved successfully acquiring and tracking Earth-based signals from 362,000 kilometres (225,000 miles) away.
'On Earth we can use GNSS signals to navigate in everything from smartphones to airplanes,' said Kevin Coggins, deputy associate administrator for Nasa's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program.
'Now, LuGRE shows us that we can successfully acquire and track GNSS signals at the Moon. This is a very exciting discovery for lunar navigation, and we hope to leverage this capability for future missions.'
The Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) took place using Firefly Aerospace's lunar lander Blue Ghost, which became the first commercial craft to successfully reach the Moon after landing on its surface this week.
GPS operations are set to continue for the next two weeks in an effort to collect more data and further develop the Moon's first advanced navigation system.
Nasa hopes to use the technology for its upcoming Artemis missions, which will attempt to return astronauts to the Moon for the first time in more than 50 years.
Along with introducing GPS, Nasa is also working to create a new standard of time for the Moon to be used by astronauts, spacecraft and satellites.
Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) aims to address the disparities between Earth-based timekeeping and the Moon, where a day lasts 29.5 Earth days.
Differing gravitational forces also mean that Earth-based clocks appear to lose 58.7 microseconds per Earth day.
'An atomic clock on the moon will tick at a different rate than a clock on Earth,' Kevin Coggins, Nasa's top communications and navigation official, said last year.
'It makes sense that when you go to another body, like the moon or Mars that each one gets its own heartbeat.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Wales Online
3 hours ago
- Wales Online
NASA says there's higher chance Asteroid 2024 YR4 will hit the Moon
NASA says there's higher chance Asteroid 2024 YR4 will hit the Moon The asteroid was originally projected to hit Earth, but a moon strike is now more likely We now have a more accurate track on Asteroid YR4 An asteroid scientists feared would cause havoc by striking the Earth in the year 2032 now has an increased likelihood of hitting the Moon. Asteroid 2024 YR4 is currently too distant to detect with telescopes from Earth, but NASA's James Webb Space Telescope collected one more observation of the asteroid before it escaped from view in its orbit around the Sun. With the additional data, experts from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California further refined the asteroid's orbit. The Webb data improved our knowledge of where the asteroid will be on 22 December 22, 2032, by nearly 20%. As a result, the asteroid's probability of impacting the Moon has slightly increased from 3.8% to 4.3%. In the small chance that the asteroid were to impact, it would not alter the Moon's orbit. When asteroid 2024 YR4 was first discovered, the asteroid had a small chance of impacting Earth. After more observations, NASA concluded the object poses no significant impact risk to Earth in 2032 and beyond. As additional data comes in, it is normal for the impact probability to evolve. An international team led by Dr. Andy Rivkin from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, made the observations using Webb's Near-Infrared Camera in May. Asteroid 2024 YR4 is now too far away to observe with either space or ground-based telescopes. NASA expects to make further observations when its orbit around the Sun brings it back into the vicinity of Earth in 2028.
Daily Mirror
3 hours ago
- Daily Mirror
NASA astronomers say it's now 'more likely' asteroid YR4 could hit the Moon
It was initially feared the asteroid would hit Earth, but the odds of a moonstrike have now been increased An asteroid scientists feared would cause havoc by striking the Earth in the year 2032 now has an increased likelihood of hitting the Moon. Asteroid 2024 YR4 is currently too distant to detect with telescopes from Earth, but NASA's James Webb Space Telescope collected one more observation of the asteroid before it escaped from view in its orbit around the Sun. With the additional data, experts from NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies at the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California further refined the asteroid's orbit. The Webb data improved our knowledge of where the asteroid will be on 22 December 22, 2032, by nearly 20%. As a result, the asteroid's probability of impacting the Moon has slightly increased from 3.8% to 4.3%. In the small chance that the asteroid were to impact, it would not alter the Moon's orbit. When asteroid 2024 YR4 was first discovered, the asteroid had a small chance of impacting Earth. After more observations, NASA concluded the object poses no significant impact risk to Earth in 2032 and beyond. As additional data comes in, it is normal for the impact probability to evolve. An international team led by Dr. Andy Rivkin from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, made the observations using Webb's Near-Infrared Camera in May. Asteroid 2024 YR4 is now too far away to observe with either space or ground-based telescopes. NASA expects to make further observations when its orbit around the Sun brings it back into the vicinity of Earth in 2028.
The Independent
11 hours ago
- The Independent
Solar Orbiter offers first glimpse of sun's poles in breakthrough mission
The first-ever images of the sun 's south pole have been captured by the robotic Solar Orbiter spacecraft. The European Space Agency (ESA) released images on Wednesday using three of Solar Orbiter's onboard instruments. The images, taken in March, show the sun's south pole from a distance of roughly 40 million miles, obtained at a period of maximum solar activity. Images of the north pole are still being transmitted by the spacecraft back to Earth. Solar Orbiter, developed by ESA in collaboration with the US space agency NASA, was launched in 2020 from Florida. Until now, all the views of the sun have come from the same vantage point – looking face-on toward its equator from the plane on which Earth and most of the solar system 's other planets orbit, called the ecliptic plane. But in February, Solar Orbiter used a gravity-assist flyby around Venus to tilt its trajectory, enabling a view of the sun from about 17 degrees below the equator. Future Venus flybys will increase that angle to more than 30 degrees, allowing for even better polar observations. "The best is still to come. What we have seen is just a first quick peek," said solar physicist Sami Solanki from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany, who leads the science team behind the spacecraft's Polarimetric and Helioseismic Imager. Mr Solanki explained that "the spacecraft observed both poles, first the south pole, then the north pole'. He added: "The north pole's data will arrive in the coming weeks or months." Solar Orbiter is currently collecting information on several solar phenomena, including the sun's magnetic field, its activity cycle, and the solar wind – a constant, high-speed stream of charged particles that flows outward from the sun's outer atmosphere and fills the solar system. "We are not sure what we will find, and it is likely we will see things that we didn't know about before," solar physicist Hamish Reid of UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory said. The sun is a ball of hot electrically charged gas that, as it moves, generates a powerful magnetic field, which flips from south to north and back again every 11 years in what is called the solar cycle. The magnetic field drives the formation of sunspots, cooler regions on the solar surface that appear as dark blotches. At the cycle's beginning, the sun has fewer sunspots. Their number increases as the cycle progresses, before starting all over again. "What we have been missing to really understand this (solar cycle) is what is actually happening at the top and bottom of the sun," Mr Reid said. The sun's diameter is about 865,000 miles – more than 100 times wider than Earth. "Whilst the Earth has a clear north and south pole, the Solar Orbiter measurements show both north and south polarity magnetic fields are currently present at the south pole of the sun. This happens during the maximum in activity of the solar cycle, when the sun's magnetic field is about to flip. In the coming years, the sun will reach solar minimum, and we expect to see a more orderly magnetic field around the poles of the sun," Mr Reid said. "We see in the images and movies of the polar regions that the sun's magnetic field is chaotic at the poles at the (current) phase of the solar cycle - high solar activity, cycle maximum," Mr Solanki said. The sun is located about 93 million miles from our planet. "The data that Solar Orbiter obtains during the coming years will help modellers in predicting the solar cycle. This is important for us on Earth because the sun's activity causes solar flares and coronal mass ejections which can result in radio communication blackouts, destabilize our power grids, but also drive the sensational auroras," Mr Reid said. "Solar Orbiter's new vantage point out of the ecliptic will also allow us to get a better picture of how the solar wind expands to form the heliosphere, a vast bubble around the sun and its planets," he added. A previous spacecraft, Ulysses, flew over the solar poles in the 1990s. "Ulysses, however, was blind in the sense that it did not carry any optical instruments - telescopes or cameras - and hence could only sense the solar wind passing the spacecraft directly, but could not image the sun," Mr Solanki said.
