NASA to Demonstrate Revolutionary Autonomous Navigation System on Moon

Demonstrating autonomous navigation, the Lunar Node 1 experiment, or LN-1, is a radio beacon designed to support precise geolocation and navigation observations to orbiters, landers, and surface personnel, digitally confirming their positions on the Moon relative to other craft, ground stations, or rovers on the move. The system is designed to operate as part of a broader navigation infrastructure, anchored by a series of satellites in lunar orbit as being procured under NASA’s Lunar Communications Relay and Navigation Systems project. Together, future versions of LN-1 would utilize LunaNet-defined standards to provide interoperable navigation reference signals from surface beacons as well as orbital assets. Producer: Alex Russell Editor: Jonathan Deal

What is said in the film

Lunar Node one is meant to be a demonstration of how we can use various navigation technologies to figure out where you are in and around the moon. My name is Evan Anzalone. I'm a navigation engineer at Marshall Space Flight Center, and I'm the principal investigator for the lunar node one Navigation Beacon. DEMONSTRATOR Payload. Some of the technologies here have begun as initial investment and technology developments.

I first started here about ten years ago. So it's been amazing to be able to see this technology grow from a paper study software demonstration all the way up to a payload. They're actually coming demonstrate a technology from the lunar surface. Our focus is on developing the enabling technologies to help vehicles and the science payloads navigate on know where they at and know what time it is on the moon. So part of our payload is attempted multiple approaches towards it, ranging both to a radiometric and also time based delay measurements in order to help vehicles understand how far away they are from some known location.

That way they can help inform where they're at to guide their operations and navigate on the surface of the moon. I'm holding in my hands at the lunar node one mass simulator. We use this build to test out our vibrational modes, put on a shake table, and also do fit checks with the lander itself. Inside of our payload, we have multiple electronics boards that fit within the chassis. That is a little bit about a half a U in size.

I mean, see our external connectors here where we have our data and power to the lander itself. And within here we have multiple boards that do the power regulation, our data controller, FPGA, all this kind of electronics pieces are in here as well as a small S-band radio that touches up underneath this top radiator in order to distribute this heat and then to talk to the antenna which mounts here. This is the same size and build as a flight payload. It's just not covered in MLI are some of the other materials that you'll see on the flight build itself

Where this page came from

This page was imported from [NASA](https://images.nasa.gov/details/CLPS_Evan Anzalone Social (1)). NASA material is generally not copyrighted and is in the public domain.

Nobody has written it yet — it is the source material at a new address, which is why search engines are asked to skip it and why no one earns from it. It is up for grabs: take it on, and it is yours to rewrite and to earn from.