LuGRE

The Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment (LuGRE) is a joint NASA-Italian Space Agency (ASI) payload on the Firefly Blue Ghost Mission 1 (BGM1) with the goal to demonstrate GNSS-based positioning, navigation, and timing at the Moon. LuGRE was chosen by the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program as one of ten payloads on its “19D” task order for delivery to the lunar surface in 2023.

The LuGRE payload consists of a weak-signal GNSS receiver, a high-gain L-band patch antenna, a low-noise amplifier, and a RF filter. The receiver will track GPS L1 C/A and L5, and Galileo E1 and E5a signals and will return pseudorange, carrier phase, and Doppler measurements to the ground. It will also calculate least-squares point solutions and Kalman-filter based navigation solutions onboard. In addition, the receiver features the capability to record raw I/Q baseband samples for downlink and ground processing.

WAY4WARD is responsible of the design, development and test of the Precise Orbit Determination (POD) function of the LuGRE receiver for the Moon Transfer Orbit.

Furthermore, WAY4WARD will bring, in the overall activities, the internally developed tool GOOD Sim (GNSS Outer Orbits Data Simulator) to support the LuGRE POD Development and test activities.