Lunar exploration ground sites will enhance the Near Space Network’s communications services

NASA’s LEGS can do greater than assist Earthlings transfer concerning the planet. Three Lunar Exploration Floor Websites, or LEGS, will improve the Close to Area Community’s communications companies and help of NASA’s Artemis marketing campaign.

NASA’s Area Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program maintains the company’s two major communications networks—the Deep Area Community and the Close to Area Community, which allow satellites in space to ship knowledge again to Earth for investigation and discovery.

Utilizing antennas across the globe, these networks seize alerts from satellites, amassing knowledge and enabling navigation engineers to trace the mission. For the primary Artemis mission, these networks labored in tandem to help the mission because it accomplished its 25-day journey across the moon. They’ll do the identical for the upcoming Artemis II mission.

To help NASA’s Moon to Mars initiative, NASA is including three new LEGS antennas to the Close to Area Community. As NASA works towards sustaining a human presence on the moon, communications and navigation help can be essential to every mission’s success. The LEGS antennas will straight help the later Artemis missions, and accompanying missions such because the human touchdown system, lunar terrain automobile, and Gateway.

“One of many primary targets of LEGS is to dump the Deep Area Community,” stated TJ Crooks, LEGS venture supervisor at NASA’s Goddard Area Flight Middle in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The Close to Area Community and its new LEGS antennas will deal with lunar missions whereas permitting the Deep Area Community to help missions farther out into the solar system—just like the James Webb Area Telescope and the interstellar Voyager missions.”

The Close to Area Community supplies communications and navigation companies to missions anyplace from close to Earth to 1.2 million miles away—this consists of the moon and sun-Earth Lagrange points 1 and a pair of. The moon and Lagrange points are a shared area with the Deep Area Community, which may present companies to missions there and farther out within the solar system.

The LEGS antennas, that are 66 toes in diameter, can be strategically positioned throughout the globe. This international placement ensures that when the moon is setting at one station, it’s rising into one other’s view. With the moon continuously in sight, the Close to Area Community will be capable to present steady help for lunar operations.

The way it works

As a satellite orbits the moon, it encodes its knowledge onto a radio frequency sign. When a LEGS antenna comes into view, that satellite (or rover, and many others.) will downlink the sign to a LEGS antenna. This knowledge is then routed to mission operators and scientists across the globe who could make selections about spacecraft well being and orbit or use the science knowledge to make discoveries.

The LEGS antennas are meant to be extraordinarily versatile for customers. For LEGS-1, LEGS-2, and LEGS-3, NASA is implementing a “dual-band strategy” for the antennas that can permit missions to speak utilizing two completely different radio frequency bands—X-band and Ka-band.

Sometimes, smaller knowledge packets—like telemetry knowledge—are despatched over X-band, whereas high-resolution science knowledge or imagery wants Ka-band. Attributable to its larger frequency, Ka-band permits considerably extra data to be downlinked without delay, similar to real-time high-resolution video in help of crewed operations.

Additional LEGS capability can be sought from industrial service suppliers and can embrace a “tri-band strategy” for the antennas utilizing S-band along with X- and Ka-band.

The primary LEGS floor station, or LEGS-1, is at NASA’s White Sands Advanced in Las Cruces, New Mexico. NASA is enhancing land and services on the advanced to obtain the brand new LEGS-1 antenna.

The LEGS-2 antenna can be in Matjiesfontein, South Africa, positioned close to Cape City. In partnership with SANSA, the South African Nationwide Area Company, NASA selected this location to maximise protection to the moon.

South Africa was residence to a floor monitoring station outdoors Johannesburg that performed a job in NASA’s Apollo missions to the moon within the Sixties. The company plans to finish the LEGS-2 antenna in 2026. For LEGS-3, NASA is exploring areas in Western Australia.

These stations will absolutely complement the present capabilities of the Close to and Deep Area Networks and permit for extra strong communications companies to the Artemis marketing campaign.