NASA, Australian Space Industry Partner on Lunar Search and Rescue
- By CDOTrends editors
- December 06, 2022
The South Australian capital of Adelaide’s development as a center for the space industry continues to gather momentum with a new agreement between a smart satellite industry cluster and U.S. space agency NASA.
The SmartSat Co-operative Research Centre (CRC) in Adelaide will work with NASA to build new Search and Rescue (SAR) beacon technologies for ultimate use in the future human exploration of the moon's surface.
Known as LunaSAR, the technology is designed to support the safety of astronauts on the moon as part of the Artemis program.
Like distress beacons on Earth, this system will provide miniature low-power radio beacons mounted on space suits and lunar rover vehicles.
The technology will support SOS and two-way messaging over a lunar orbiting satellite constellation. It will also allow the beacon location to be accurately determined without GPS.
This information will be provided securely and quickly to the mission control center on Earth and the response team on the moon, who can take immediate action.
Under the agreement, NASA’s Search and Rescue Laboratory (SARLab) at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will bring experts to the project to help guide and review the technical direction.
NASA will also provide access to unique and comprehensive test facilities to assess the performance of the new technology as it is being developed by a SmartSat-funded research team led by industry partner Safety from Space.
The research team will design a new specialized beacon for extra-terrestrial environments based on a new waveform. As well as direct Artemis applications, they will also investigate the potential for enhanced services to extend beyond SAR to broader emergency management, such as natural disaster warning systems.
The SmartSat CRC is a consortium of universities and other research organizations partnered with industry funded by the Australian Government to develop know-how and technologies in advanced telecommunications and IoT connectivity, intelligent satellite systems, and Earth observation next-generation data services.
SmartSat CRC brings together over 100 national and international partners who have invested over AUD190 million, along with AUD55 million in Australian Government funding under its Cooperative Research Centres Program, in a AUD245 million research effort over seven years.
Image credit: iStockphoto/1971yes