How LunaNet Will Bring Internet-Like Capabilities To The Moon

By John Oncea, Editor

NASA’s return to the Moon brings with it many challenges, including the development of communications, navigation, and networking capabilities. The development of LunaNet will help meet these challenges.

Remcom, a company specializing in electromagnetic simulation and wireless propagation software, recently announced it was awarded a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract to provide NASA with wireless channel simulation and coverage analysis for their lunar operations. This work will ensure reliable network performance in the Moon’s challenging and unique environment, as well as support the development of LunaNet, NASA’s lunar communications and navigation architecture.

Remcom’s software will help NASA overcome several challenges for wireless communication presented by the lunar environment including extreme temperature variations, unusual scattering conditions, curved surfaces of craters, effects of regolith dust, multipath fading, delay spread, and Doppler effects.

By simulating these conditions, NASA can better plan the positioning of communication systems for lunar operations, ensuring connectivity for future Artemis missions. This collaboration between NASA and Remcom represents a significant step in developing the infrastructure necessary for sustained human presence on the Moon, leveraging terrestrial technologies like 4G/5G for lunar applications.

But what, exactly, is LunaNet and how will it advance benefit NASA?

From Apollo To Artemis

NASA’s Artemis campaign aims to explore the Moon for scientific discovery, advance technology, and learn how to live and work on another world in preparation for sending human missions to Mars. The space agency anticipates the Artemis campaign will, according to The Invisible Network, lead to an “interconnected solar system – a network that extends beyond Earth’s bounds, connecting space and Earth in an interplanetary internet and integrating systems into one seamless architecture.”

NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (ScaN) program has been charged with developing this architecture for lunar communications and the concept they came up with – LunaNet – will empower NASA to explore the Moon and lay the foundation to support missions to Mars and beyond by providing four key services: networking, positioning, navigation, and timing; detection and information; and science.

According to Andrew Petro, who led lunar communications and navigation architecture development and implementation for ScaN until his retirement in December 2023, “LunaNet is not a thing or a place. It’s a set of cooperating networks based on a framework of mutually agreed-upon standards that would enable interoperability among different networks that might be supporting missions at and around the Moon. It’s somewhat like – in concept – the internet, a collection of things and the framework that allows them to work together.”

It also will keep some of the communications capabilities established during the Apollo missions, but many others will be developed to support the unique needs of Artemis and other future lunar exploration. “We will continue to use the same types of ground stations and radio systems that have been used all along to support missions to the Moon,” Petro said. “What will be different is that we want to ensure interoperability and provide more continuous service to missions wherever they are, whether that’s on the far side or the near side, or near the poles, which is a very interesting area to explore.”

The Artemis program represents a significant expansion of lunar exploration compared to the Apollo missions. While Apollo focused on limited sites on the Moon's near side, Artemis aims to explore a much broader range of lunar environments. This ambitious program will enable consistent and sustained exploration across diverse areas of the Moon, pushing the boundaries of human presence beyond Earth.

The Creation Of LunaNet

NASA writes, “LunaNet began its life at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD with a cross-functional team of networking, navigation, science, and systems engineering experts building upon previous NASA and international activities. From this foundation, experts agency-wide came together to refine the proposal and develop draft interoperability standards.”

“The Exploration and Space Communications projects division — which implements SCaN’s vision at Goddard — presented early plans for the architecture in June of 2019, responding to a solicitation for communications and navigation concepts for small satellite constellations on the Moon,” adds The Invisible Network. “The LunaNet concept evolved from there.”

“LunaNet is an exciting opportunity for the NASA communications and navigation team and the science and exploration community at large,” said Dave Israel, communications architect at Goddard. “Together, we’re refining a cutting-edge approach that will meet the needs of lunar missions for many decades to come.”

LunaNet utilizes advanced networking techniques and an extensible framework. This architecture enables NASA to collaborate with industry, academia, and international partners in building and operating LunaNet nodes and employs Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) as its core framework, ensuring seamless data flow even during signal disruptions by allowing nodes to store data until connections are re-established. The system offers four key services:

• Networking: Provides internet-like connectivity without pre-scheduled links.
• Navigation: Enables high-precision, Earth-independent navigation for lunar missions, supporting both orbital and surface operations.
• Detection and Information: Offers critical alerts and information to enhance situational awareness, including space weather warnings and LunaSAR, a lunar search and rescue capability.
• Science: Utilizes network nodes for scientific measurements, allowing for comprehensive lunar environment studies and potential radio astronomy applications.

LunaNet's architecture promotes operational independence from Earth while maintaining high precision. It will significantly enhance the capabilities of crewed and robotic missions, allowing them to quickly determine locations and integrate this data into their planning systems. This approach represents a paradigm shift in lunar exploration, providing a flexible and extensible framework that can support a sustained human presence on the Moon and pave the way for future deep space missions.

“Artemis is a collaborative endeavor, relying on academia, commercial aerospace companies, and the international community. LunaNet is no different,” said Jaime Esper, who helped lead the development of the draft interoperability specifications. “Together, we hope to define a robust architecture that can meet the needs and desires of the widest possible set of user missions and service providers.”

LunaNet In Action

As noted, LunaNet is a sum of its parts as opposed to being one thing. Or, as Israel puts it, “LunaNet is a network of networks. It’s the combination of (assets) that would provide the connectivity and the services to the lunar missions.”

These networked assets include the spacecraft, dedicated lunar relay satellites, and ground stations on Earth and LunaNet can bring this seemingly discreet infrastructure into a user-focused platform – just like the internet.

And while LunaNet is being designed with Artemis in mind, developers are looking at the bigger picture. “We’re looking at this as a larger enterprise, where there are multiple missions, multiple types of missions, and multiple organizations that are all planning to go to the Moon,” said Israel. “So, instead of designing an architecture and an infrastructure that’s very specific to one particular case, we’re looking from the beginning to set things up so that it’s scalable and can provide support ranging from the smallest sort of robotic mission or sensor on the surface of the Moon to – one day – the human base camp and large dwellings in operations on the Moon.”

While LunaNet is not yet fully operational, NASA is actively developing and testing key technologies, refining the architecture, testing technologies like DTN on missions such as PACE, developing prototypes and demonstrations (e.g., LuGRE), establishing interoperability standards and protocols, and planning integration with the Artemis program.

LunaNet represents a significant advancement in space communications and navigation, aiming to support long-term lunar presence and pave the way for future deep space exploration. Its implementation is likely to be gradual, with different components and services becoming operational over time as the Artemis program progresses.

Given these factors, it’s reasonable to expect that initial LunaNet capabilities may start to come online in the mid to late 2020s, aligning with the Artemis program’s timeline. However, the full implementation of all LunaNet services and capabilities will likely extend into the 2030s as lunar exploration activities expand.