Lunar GPS

With development and testing of the shuttle replacement well underway, the next milestone beyond first flight of the rocket, is a lunar base. In order for the lunar base to be successful, they will need to communicate with Earth. This could pose a challenge for when astronauts are on the backside of the moon.

The current proposal is to launch a number of satellites to act as communication relay for the astronauts, and they could also double as a Lunar GPS system. A few proposals currently exist for where to place the satellites. One is the most obvious of orbiting the moon, but the moon has a very irregular gravitational field due to irregular mass within the moon. So they would have to follow a very specific path. The second idea is to place the satellites in the Lagrangian points where they would be able to see the reverse side of the moon and would remain fixed relative to the Earth-Moon system.

Swing on over to Space.com to check out the full article.

Godspeed