For 30 total minutes in February, NASA lit a beacon on the Moon. Delivered to the lunar surface Feb. 22 via the Odyssey lander, NASA’s Lunar Node-1 experiment successfully demonstrated a new navigation and positioning system that will change how spacecraft and humans explore the Moon.
For 30 total minutes in February, NASA lit a beacon on the Moon – successfully testing a sophisticated positioning system that will make it safer for Artemis-era explorers to visit and establish a permanent human presence on the lunar surface.
That system would be a marked improvement over conventional, Earth-based radio data relays, NASA researchers said – even more so compared to Apollo-era astronauts trying to “eyeball” distance and direction on the vast, mostly grey lunar surface. During IM-1’s translunar journey, the Marshall team conducted daily tests of the LN-1 beacon. The original plan was for the payload to transmit its beacon around the clock upon landing. NASA’s
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