Options analysis of navigation systems for the Moon
Conducting a detailed study of the Moon and its further development should be based on a high-precision positioning system for objects located on its surface and in the circumlunar space. Currently, many space agencies and research centers are developing navigation systems for the Moon. The proposed projects stay at various stages from concepts to experimental work. Thus, conducting detailed analysis of these projects is an up-to-date task. Basic types of navigation systems, suggested to development by Russian and foreign researches, were outlined following the results of the analysis. Certainly, there is a number of concepts, such as navigation by pulsars, but they are even more complicated in realization and of less accuracy than those under consideration. These are, in the first place, radio-navigational systems, which can be conditionally split into three basic groups: - The systems based on constant contact with terrestrial systems; - Navigation systems autonomous from the Earth navigation (i.e., those not employing the Earth GLONASS, GPS, etc. as a support) with lunar reference points; - Autonomous systems without reference lunar based points. All types of the systems have both their advantages and disadvantages: this is either the presence of a mandatory binding to the Earth (hence, there are delays in receiving any kinds of signals at such a distance), or either a large number of spacecraft or a complex lunar based segment. Systems with gravitational measurements and the artificial intelligence application cannot fully perform the tasks of global lunar navigation. Thus, we believe that the proposed lunar optical navigation system is up-to-date and solves many of the problems and shortcomings of the above-mentioned modern projects and proposals in the field of navigation on the Moon.