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Paris: The European Space Agency (ESA) announced the development of the NovaMoon mission to enhance the accuracy of positioning, navigation, and timing on the lunar surface, aiming to achieve an accuracy of less than one meter, supporting future lunar missions.
The mission includes efforts to establish a reference station for location and timing measurements, and to use atomic clocks to provide a lunar time reference, contributing to improved positioning accuracy on the Moon’s surface.
The mission also involves research related to the Moon's composition and internal structure, along with conducting experiments in general relativity and fundamental physics to test technologies that can be utilized in future scientific missions.
The agency intends to develop the mission through three consecutive phases to test the technologies, evaluate their performance, and verify their readiness before reaching the final configuration.
The final payload of the mission is scheduled to operate for two years, with the possibility of extending operations up to five years, according to the announced mission plans.
