“Moonlight” is a project of the European Space Agency (ESA) which aims to provide the Moon of a constellation of satellites of telecommunications and navigation open to all with a whole range of communication and navigation services related to thelunar exploration.
This project was announced in May 2021. For now, it is a conceptual phase. That is to say that the architecture of this system is not fixed, just like the service execution model, and several scenarios are being studied. The idea that seems to have consensus would be the deployment of a constellation of at least three satellites in orbit around the Moon in an orbit that has not yet been defined.
To get a clearer idea of the needs and of the architecture best suited to implementing them, ESA put two business consortia in competition to define in detail the provision of telecommunications and navigation services for missions to the moon :SSTL(Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd) will lead the first consortium and the second will be led by Telespazio associated with Thales Alenia Space.
Moonlight, a lunar satellite constellation project developed by the European Space Agency. © ESA
In 2024, a demonstration mission to clear the technological ground
Moonlight could be commissioned as early as 2027, after feedback from the Lunar Pathfinder (developed by SSTL Ltd), a lunar communications satellite scheduled for launch in 2024 and intended to relay communications and data from exploration missions to the South Pole of the moon. This satellite must also carry out a complete demonstration of lunar navigation in orbit. NASA also has a similar system in its projects, and probably the Chinese too, but for the moment it is the European Space Agency which has taken the lead and initiated the first studies.
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