Peraton plays a crucial role in NASA’s lunar missions by operating and maintaining the Near Space Network (NSN) and Deep Space Network (DSN), which are essential for communication between mission control centers and spacecraft. These networks support initiatives like the Lunar Node-1 (LN-1) experiment, a radio beacon designed to demonstrate autonomous navigation on the Moon.
Inside GNSS
April 1, 2025
With the recent heavy investment in missions targeting lunar space, both on the surface and in various orbits [1], cislunar space will be approaching a critical mass where the number of vehicles and support assets operating simultaneously is large enough that the desire for in-situ aids becomes preferable to independent fully Earth-centric operations. There have been previous studies on ideas like the Interplanetary Internet network [2] and concepts like LunaNet [3] that seek to build out a more robust network to enable multi-user compatibility and a shared backbone of data to/from Earth. This is not only for communication and data transport, but also areas such as navigation. The baseline approach for long-term lunar orbiting assets and for the Apollo missions was to use ground-tracking assets on Earth to provide updates to vehicles of the spacecraft’s position and velocity at a given time [4, 5]. While this approach is understood and implemented, it is limited by the number of available ground stations and support observations. Scenarios such as multi-spacecraft in aperture help to alleviate this impact, but with increasing missions requiring high data simultaneously, alternate solutions are needed for long-term sustainability and growth.
Acknowledgements
Flight ground networks provided by DSN through our Mission Integration Manager, Kathleen Harmon, with extensive support by JPL and Peraton staff for testing, integration and operations.
