Lunar Pathfinder

Service Description

The Lunar Pathfinder spacecraft is designed to provide affordable communications services to lunar missions via S-band and UHF links to lunar assets on the surface and in orbit around the Moon, and an X-band link to Earth.

ESA and NASA have signed an MoU in June 2022 and agreed to have NASA to provide a rideshare to lunar orbit for the Lunar Pathfinder spacecraft in 2025 and ESA to provide NASA with access to the Lunar Pathfinder lunar relay communication services.

The Lunar Pathfinder services will be a mission enabler for polar and far-side missions, which, without direct line of sight of the Earth, would otherwise have to procure their own communications relay spacecraft.

Lunar Pathfinder is complementary to Direct-to-Earth communication solutions and a credible alternative to institutional deep-space ground stations, offering orbiters and near-side missions a better availability, enhanced safety and improved data-rate.

Lunar Pathfinder Mission Builder

Lunar Mission Services from SSTL | SSTL

This tool allows potential future users of the SSTL Lunar’s communication relay services to perform an initial assessment of the services they could receive through Lunar Pathfinder.

www.sstl.co.uk

Background

Lunar Pathfinder is a first step towards ESA’s ambitious Moonlight vision to create a network of communications and data relay satellites serving users worldwide. Such satellites could also provide navigation data for lunar exploration, just as today we navigate using Galileo and GPS on Earth.

The far side and polar regions of the Moon are a particular area of interest to space agencies as a potential source of resources for water, fuel and oxygen. A communications relay satellite such as Lunar Pathfinder is necessary to ensure continuous contact for both robots and humans.

The Lunar Pathfinder mission also hosts two separate ESA experiments, the first testing the possibility of using existing navigation satellites for positioning on the Moon and the second a space weather monitor to understand radiation levels around the Moon – important for human explorers.

In the Media

SSTL LUNAR SUPPORTS NASA PAYLOAD WORKSHOP | Small Satellite supplier | Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd | SSTL

The SSTL Lunar team recently travelled with ESA to Houston, TX, USA, to support the payload workshop for the NASA Commercial Lunar Payload Service (CLPS) CS-3 task order. The CS-3 task order, when issued, would deliver Lunar Pathfinder to lunar orbit and the LuSEE-Night payload to the moon’s far sid…

www.sstl.co.uk

NASA Mirrors on ESA Pathfinder to Enhance Lunar Navigation

NASA will supply the upcoming European Space Agency (ESA) Lunar Pathfinder satellite with an array of laser retroreflectors, mirrored devices that reflect light back at its source. The retroreflectors will validate navigation capabilities that will be critical to the Artemis missions and future luna…

www.nasa.gov

ESA and NASA to cooperate on Earth science and lunar mission - SpaceNews

NASA and ESA announced agreements to cooperate on Earth science and a lunar mission but are still discussing more cooperation on Artemis and ExoMars.

spacenews.com

Case Study: Lunar Pathfinder

Lunar Pathfinder will be the world’s first dedicated lunar communications relay spacecraft when it launches in 2024.

www.gov.uk

The Moon – where no satnav has gone before

The test version of a unique satellite navigation receiver has been delivered for integration testing on the Lunar Pathfinder spacecraft. The NaviMoon satnav receiver is designed to perform the farthest ever positioning fix from Earth, employing signals that will be millions of times fainter th…

www.esa.int

Moon contract signals new direction for Europe

The European Space Agency wants more missions to look like the UK’s Lunar Pathfinder satellite.

www.bbc.com

ESA to be anchor customer on commercial lunar satellite - SpaceNews

ESA has signed a contract with SSTL to be the anchor customer on a commercial lunar communications satellite that company is developing.