NASA Working With NGA To Implement Full GPS Capability On The Moon

NGA: “Today, we’re working with NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Space Force, and U.S. Space Command to develop a lunar geodetic system”

NASA/NGA - The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) is jointly working with NASA to implement a GPS positioning and navigational system that would be fully functional on the moon, guiding visitors "as accurately and as safely as GPS does on Earth,” NGA’s director Vice Adm. Frank Whitworth on May 22nd during a keynote speech at the GEOINT 2023 symposium.

He said that the Defense Mapping Agency, which preceded the NGA had mapped the moon before the Apollo missions in the 1960s and 1970s.

“Today, we’re working with NASA, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S.  Space Force, and U.S. Space Command to develop a lunar geodetic system,” he stated.

He also mentioned that the NGA plans further projects on other celestial bodies. “The lunar geodetic system is likely to be the first of many celestial body reference systems NGA will be tasked with in the years ahead," he said.

Whitworth said that they aren't going to "rush to failure" with the project. He added, “We’re actually taking the right amount of time both with ourselves and academia and other communities to ensure that we do it right".

James Griffith, NGA’s director of source operations and management also said at the conference on May 22nd, “We are still doing the science to try to understand it".

"We are working with many of our colleagues across the scientific community, and working very closely with NASA to understand how do you build this reference frame and then how do you make it a repeatable process?” he added.

Some of the challenges the project must tackle involve the moon's gravity and lack of atmosphere which creates some obstacles to overcome when it comes to navigation. "We know the types of data we need to collect, but we don’t necessarily know how to collect it in that type of environment," he said.

He added, “Our tools aren’t built for that, and so we have a lot of exploratory work to do".

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