IT Home July 4th News In preparation for the upcoming return to the moon, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is working to extend GPS navigation to the moon to facilitate spacecraft and astronauts on the moon.

According to foreign media, what NASA wants to achieve is to use the existing GPS system to navigate the spacecraft or the pilot on the moon without having to rebuild the infrastructure on the moon.

GPS is an abbreviation for “global positioning system”, which means global satellite positioning system. The system captures the location via satellite, so the mobile app can point the user to the new restaurant. But when you are not on Earth, the satellite will not work.

“NASA has been driving high-altitude GPS technology for many years. “MMS System Architect Luke Winternitz said at the NASA press conference: “The GPS around the moon is the next border. In fact, NASA has successfully extended the service range of GPS to space of more than 100,000 kilometers from the ground four years ago.

In 2015, NASA launched four spacecraft (mission code MMS) for the phenomenon of “magnetic reconnection”, which is the precise positioning of the GPS system, so that the four satellites are maintained in a tetrahedral structure at the most. About 150,000 kilometers from the Earth.

However, the moon is more than 380,000 kilometers away from the Earth. To receive signals on the moon, it is necessary to further enhance some parameters of the receiver based on MMS, such as high-gain antennas, enhanced clocks and more sophisticated electronics. Equipment, etc.

It is reported that NASA has commissioned the Goddard Space Center in Maryland, USA to build a prototype of a lunar GPS receiver, and is ready to send it to the International Space Station for testing in the near future. If the system reliability is verified, the future connection between the moon and the Earth. Will be even closer.

In addition, NASA is still experimenting with deep-space atomic clocks, which will also change the way spacecraft fly to Mars or beyond. At present, the deep space atomic clock has been riding the "Falcon heavy" rocket into space. This means that the navigation method of deep space travel in the future will be dominated by the ground and gradually transition to the global positioning system-led or autonomous navigation.

In the future, with the new “deep space atomic clock”, the aircraft can transition to one-way tracking. The spacecraft will use the clocks it carries to measure the time it takes for the tracking signal to travel from Earth to the spacecraft without the need to send the signal back to the ground's atomic clock for measurement. This will enable the aircraft to judge its own orbit. With more efficient navigation, the aircraft can position itself, and space exploration can be more flexible and more timely to respond to unexpected situations.