NASA and the Italian Space Agency have made history by successfully tracking GPS signals on the moon for the first time.
This groundbreaking achievement was made possible by the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE), which picked up and tracked Earth-based navigation signals from the moon’s surface on March 3, 2024.
This success proves that Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals, including GPS from the United States and Galileo from Europe, can be used for navigation far beyond Earth.
This could greatly help future lunar missions, such as NASA’s Artemis program, by allowing spacecraft to determine their position, speed, and time with greater accuracy.
It is also a major step toward improving navigation for missions to Mars.
“On Earth, we use GPS for everything from smartphones to airplanes,” said Kevin Coggins, a NASA official. “Now, LuGRE has shown that we can use these signals on the moon too. This is an exciting breakthrough for lunar navigation.”
The journey to this milestone began when Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lunar lander touched down on the moon on March 2.
The lander carried LuGRE as one of 10 NASA science instruments. Shortly after landing, NASA scientists at the Goddard Space Flight Center started testing the device to see if it could pick up GNSS signals from Earth.
At 2 a.m. EST on March 3, the team confirmed that LuGRE had successfully acquired and tracked GPS and Galileo signals on the moon’s surface. It even achieved a navigation fix—225,000 miles away from Earth.
The mission will continue collecting data for 14 days, helping scientists learn more about using GNSS for lunar navigation.
LuGRE also set records on its way to the moon. On January 21, it picked up GPS signals at an altitude of 209,900 miles, breaking a previous record set by NASA’s Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission.
It continued to break records when it reached lunar orbit on February 20 at 243,000 miles from Earth.
This suggests that spacecraft in cislunar space—the area between Earth and the moon—could also rely on GNSS for navigation.
Traditionally, NASA tracks spacecraft using Earth-based antennas and onboard sensors. But LuGRE’s success shows that spacecraft can navigate more independently using GNSS signals, even at great distances. This technology could make space travel more efficient and less dependent on ground control.
The LuGRE project is a collaboration between NASA, the Italian Space Agency, Qascom, and Politecnico di Torino. It also marks the first time an Italian-built device has operated on the moon, making it a proud moment for Italy’s space program.
