WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency is requesting a number of hundred million euros at its upcoming ministerial council assembly for brand spanking new satellite tv for pc navigation applied sciences from low Earth orbit to the moon.

In a Nov. 9 briefing, ESA officers mentioned they’re proposing about 500 million euros ($518 million) over the subsequent three years for tasks to develop superior applied sciences past its work supporting the European Union-led Galileo system that may each improve present providers for terrestrial customers and broaden them to help lunar exploration.

“This fast-growing market has raised the expectations of users in all domains,” mentioned Javier Benedicto, ESA’s director of navigation, requiring enhancements in resilience and accuracy. “At the next council at the ministerial level in November, ESA will work towards reinforcing the future capabilities of satellite navigation.”

One initiative, referred to as FutureNAV, will help improvement of two missions to advance satellite tv for pc navigation applied sciences. One, GENESIS, will mix 4 completely different measurement strategies on a single satellite tv for pc to enhance the worldwide terrestrial reference body used for each navigation and Earth science purposes.

The different, LEO-PNT, would check a possible future satellite tv for pc navigation constellation in low Earth orbit via an indication involving 6 to 12 smallsats. Operating from LEO, Benedicto mentioned, would permit for stronger indicators and higher resistance to jamming, probably utilizing different frequency bands. “By bringing satellite navigation closer to the Earth, LEO-PNT has the potential to make satellites cheaper and more efficient, and launches more economical.”

The purpose of LEO-PNT, ESA officers mentioned on the briefing, is a “fast track” program that may launch the smallsats in 2026 to display the potential capabilities of such a constellation. That would help future planning for the event of a LEO navigation constellation, together with whether or not it might use standalone satellites or hosted payloads, probably as a part of a broadband constellation.

“We see in the future a growth, an evolution, in the architecture of satellite navigation systems,” he mentioned, with present constellations like Galileo in medium Earth orbit serving as a “backbone” complemented by LEO methods. “The purpose of the in-orbit demonstration, the program we have in mind, is to test this in orbit and demonstrate to ourselves the added value of those new technologies before we take a programmatic decision about the future evolution of this overall architecture.”

A 3rd mission is Moonlight, a joint effort of ESA’s exploration, telecommunications and navigation directorates. Moonlight will develop communications and navigation providers on and across the moon to help ESA and companion missions there, beginning with an indication mission referred to as Lunar Pathfinder being developed by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd. (SSTL) for launch in 2025.

ESA is wrapping up the first phase of Moonlight, the place it awarded research contracts in 2021 to 2 consortia, one led by SSTL and the opposite by Telespazio. If funded on the ministerial, ESA is ready instantly afterwards to challenge a request for proposals for a second part to start improvement of Moonlight, with a purpose of constructing a range in April 2023.

Benedicto mentioned ESA will search 100 to 150 million euros for Moonlight on the ministerial council assembly, which takes place Nov. 22-23 in Paris. “It is a mission that is very scalable, and we will accommodate the scope of the mission as a function of the budget that is provided by our member states.”

He mentioned ESA is requesting 80 million euros for GENESIS and 100 million for LEO-PNT, in addition to 120 million for its Navigation Innovation and Support Programme, or NAVISP, to help work on applied sciences and providers enabled by satellite tv for pc navigation, equivalent to autonomous driving.

Those efforts are complementary, Benedicto mentioned, to the work funded by the European Commission for the Galileo satellite tv for pc navigation system. “We have an agreement whereby we have a clear distribution of roles and responsibilities,” he mentioned, with ESA chargeable for creating Galileo satellites and the EGNOS augmentation service, that are then operated by the European Union Agency for the Space Programme (EUSPA).

That consists of work by ESA constructing first- and second-generation Galileo satellites, though launches of these satellites are on maintain with the lack of the Soyuz car after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and delays within the introduction of the Ariane 6. He mentioned there isn’t any pressing must launch extra satellites given the well being of the present constellation, though it might be useful so as to add to the constellation’s in-orbit spares.

“We are, at the moment, discussing with the European Union the possibility to identify additional launch services, if necessary, for the time frame of the end of 2023, beginning of 2024, in case there would be the need to launch urgently additional satellites to guarantee the continuity of the constellation,” Benedicto mentioned. He later mentioned that included “intense discussions” with launch firms aside from Arianespace, though he didn’t disclose particular suppliers.

Ove the long run, he mentioned, ESA would use the Ariane 6, whose first launch is at present scheduled for no sooner than the fourth quarter of 2023. “Ariane 6 remains our workhorse. It is our baseline for deployment of the Galileo constellation in the future.”