Building the Infrastructure for Future Sustained Lunar Exploration

Building the infrastructure for future sustained lunar exploration. J. Friend1, P. Davies, A. da Silva Curiel, B. Hooper, S. Eckersley, Sir M. Sweeting, 1Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, 20 Stephenson Road, Surrey Research Park, Guildford, GU2 7YE, United Kingdom. The lunar economy is growing rapidly, and several credible forecasts indicate a value of this market of over $100bn dollars in the coming decade. [1] Much of this activity is planned to be commercially driven, most notably through the change from historically institutionally funded activities into service procurement e.g. as demonstrated by NASA purchasing transport services through the CLPS initiative. In addition to transport services, communications and navigation services will also largely be commercially provided. Initiatives are underway in the US, Europe and Japan to provide commercial communications and navigation services. This paper focuses on the key European initiative, Moonlight. Moonlight is a programme of activities aimed at providing an enduring capability, initially of communications services to be later followed by navigation services. The first node in the Moonlight constellation is the Lunar Pathfinder satellite, currently in development, and planned for a late 2025 launch as part of the CLPS CS-3 mission. Lunar Pathfinder is a “public private partnership" between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. NASA is also a key customer of Lunar Pathfinder through a barter agreement signed between ESA and NASA. The first spacecraft will offer data relay communication services for 8+ years to other lunar missions including orbiters, landers and rovers.[2] Following on from Lunar Pathfinder, Moonlight’s Lunar Communications and Navigation System (LCNS) will be deployed later in the decade in two stages - an initial operational capability targeting a 2027 launch followed by a full operational capability, adding further services, towards the end of the decade with the industrial team implementing the LCNS contracted in late 2024. The development that have gone into systems providing these communications, navigations and other services will also form the building blocks for low cost science missions.[3] Such missions could provide opportunities to investigate the the lunar surface and using the Moon as a location from which observatories can explore the wider universe. With a reliable and dependable communications infrastructure in place, the next step is to implement further services that will become necessary with sustained human habitation and exploration of the Moon. That includes asset tracking, surveillance and search-and-rescue. Space Situational Awareness will also become a key safety requirement for activities around and on the moon. [4] References: [1] Lunar market assessment: market trends and challenges in the development of a lunar economy, PwC, 2021 [2] ESA Lunar Pathfinder service description & news, https://bsgn.esa.int/service/lunar-pathfinder/ [3] LIRIS – Demonstrating How Small Satellites Can Revolutionise Lunar Science Data Sets, Harvey et al., Small Satellites Systems and Services Symposium (4S 2024) [4] Phase A Of Cis-Lunar Space Object Monitoring Mission, Tender Action Number: 1-12488, 2024