NASA Delivers Navigation System for Commercial Lunar Relay

According to NASA News, the agency has delivered a compact navigation system to Intuitive Machines to support the next phase of lunar exploration. Called NavCube3-mini, the device is roughly the size of a half shoebox, weighs three point five pounds, and uses GPS and Galileo signals to pinpoint spacecraft locations at lunar distances while running on about twenty watts of power — roughly what a laptop uses. The system will fly aboard Intuitive Machines' Altus-1 satellite, the first in a planned network of lunar relay stations designed to support communications and navigation for astronauts and rovers. NASA plans to land Artemis astronauts at the lunar South Pole in twenty twenty-eight, where direct communication with Earth is difficult — this infrastructure will be essential to enabling that mission and establishing a sustained human presence on the Moon.

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