Building a Lunar Network: Johnson Tests Wireless Technologies for the Moon
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Building a Lunar Network: Johnson Tests Wireless Technologies for the Moon
From left, Johnson Exploration Wireless Laboratory (JEWL) Software Lead William Dell; Lunar 3GPP Principal Investigator Raymond Wagner; JEWL intern Harlan Phillips; and JEWL Lab Manager Chatwin Lansdowne.
Credits: Nevada Space Proving Grounds (NSPG)
NASA engineers are strapping on backpacks loaded with radios, cameras, and antennas to test technology that might someday keep explorers connected on the lunar surface. Their mission: test how astronauts on the Moon will stay connected during Artemis spacewalks using 3GPP (LTE/4G and 5G) and Wi-Fi technologies.
It’s exciting to bring lunar spacewalks into the 21st century with the immersive, high-definition experience that will make people feel like they’re right there with the astronauts.
Raymond Wagner
NASA’s Lunar 3GPP Project Principal Investigator
A NASA engineer tests a backpack-mounted wireless communications system in the Nevada desert, simulating how astronauts will stay connected during Artemis lunar spacewalks.
NSPG
With Artemis, NASA will establish a long-term presence at the Moon, opening more of the lunar surface to exploration than ever before. This growth of lunar activity will require astronauts to communicate seamlessly with each other and with science teams back on Earth.
“We’re working out what the software that uses these networks needs to look like,” said Raymond Wagner, principal investigator in NASA’s Lunar 3GPP project and member of Johnson Space Center’s Exploration Wireless Laboratory (JEWL) in Houston. “We’re prototyping it with commercial off-the-shelf hardware and open-source software to show what pieces are needed and how they interact.”
Carrying a prototype wireless network pack, a NASA engineer helps test wireless 4G and 5G technologies that could one day keep Artemis astronauts connected on the Moon.
NSPG
The next big step comes with Artemis III, which will land a crew on the Moon and carry a 4G/LTE demonstration to stream video and audio from the astronauts on the lunar surface.
The vision goes further. “Right now the lander or rover will host the network,” Wagner said. “But if we go to the Moon to stay, we may eventually want actual cell towers. The spacesuit itself is already becoming the astronaut’s cell phone, and rovers could act as mobile hotspots. Altogether, these will be the building blocks of communication on the Moon.”
Team members from NASA’s Avionics Systems Laboratory at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
NASA/Sumer Loggins
Back at Johnson, teams are simulating lunar spacewalks, streaming video, audio, and telemetry over a private 5G network to a mock mission control. The work helps engineers refine how future systems will perform in challenging environments. Craters, lunar regolith, and other terrain features all affect how radio signals travel — lessons that will also carry over to Mars.
For Wagner, the project is about shaping how humanity experiences the next era of exploration. “We’re aiming for true HD on the Moon,” he said. “It’s going to be pretty mind-blowing.”
New NASA Mission to Reveal Earth’s Invisible ‘Halo’
5 min read
New NASA Mission to Reveal Earth’s Invisible ‘Halo’
A new NASA mission will capture images of Earth’s invisible “halo,” the faint light given off by our planet’s outermost atmospheric layer, the exosphere, as it morphs and changes in response to the Sun. Understanding the physics of the exosphere is a key step toward forecasting dangerous conditions in near-Earth space, a requirement for protecting Artemis astronauts traveling through the region on the way to the Moon or on future trips to Mars. The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 23.
Revealing Earth’s invisible edge
In the early 1970s, scientists could only speculate about how far Earth’s atmosphere extended into space. The mystery was rooted in the exosphere, our atmosphere’s outermost layer, which begins some 300 miles up. Theorists conceived of it as a cloud of hydrogen atoms — the lightest element in existence — that had risen so high the atoms were actively escaping into space.
But the exosphere reveals itself only via a faint “halo” of ultraviolet light known as the geocorona. Pioneering scientist and engineer Dr. George Carruthers set himself the task of seeing it. After launching a few prototypes on test rockets, he developed an ultraviolet camera ready for a one-way trip to space.
Apollo 16 astronaut John Young is pictured on the lunar surface with George Carruthers’ gold-plated Far Ultraviolet Camera/Spectrograph, the first Moon-based observatory. The Lunar Module “Orion” is on the right and the Lunar Roving Vehicle is parked in the background next to the American flag.
NASA
In April 1972, Apollo 16 astronauts placed Carruthers’ camera on the Moon’s Descartes Highlands, and humanity got its firstglimpse of Earth’s geocorona. The images it produced were as stunning for what they captured as they were for what they didn’t.
“The camera wasn’t far enough away, being at the Moon, to get the entire field of view,” said Lara Waldrop, principal investigator for the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory. “And that was really shocking — that this light, fluffy cloud of hydrogen around the Earth could extend that far from the surface.” Waldrop leads the mission from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where George Carruthers was an alumnus.
The first image of UV light from Earth’s outer atmosphere, the geocorona, taken from a telescope designed and built by George Carruthers. The telescope took the image while on the Moon during the Apollo 16 mission in 1972.
G. Carruthers (NRL) et al./Far UV Camera/NASA/Apollo 16
Our planet, in a new light
Today, the exosphere is thought to stretch at least halfway to the Moon. But the reasons for studying go beyond curiosity about its size. As solar eruptions reach Earth, they hit the exosphere first, setting off a chain of reactions that sometimes culminate in dangerous space weather storms. Understanding the exosphere’s response is important to predicting and mitigating the effects of these storms. In addition, hydrogen — one of the atomic building blocks of water, or H2O — escapes through the exosphere. Mapping that escape process will shed light on why Earth retains water while other planets don’t, helping us find exoplanets, or planets outside our solar system, that might do the same. NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, named in honor of George Carruthers, is designed to capture the first continuous movies of Earth’s exosphere, revealing its full expanse and internal dynamics.
“We’ve never had a mission before that was dedicated to making exospheric observations,” said Alex Glocer, the Carruthers mission scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “It’s really exciting that we’re going to get these measurements for the first time.”
At 531 pounds and roughly the size of a loveseat sofa, the Carruthers spacecraft will launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket along with NASA’s IMAP (Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe) spacecraft and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s SWFO-L1 (Space Weather Follow On – Lagrange 1) space weather satellite. After launch, all three missions will commence a four-month cruise phase to Lagrange point 1 (L1), a location approximately 1 million miles closer to the Sun than Earth is. After a one-month period for science checkouts, Carruthers’ two-year science phase will begin in March 2026.
Artist’s concept of the five Sun-Earth Lagrange points in space. At Lagrange points, the gravitational pull of two large masses counteract, allowing spacecraft to reduce fuel consumption needed to remain in position. The L1 point of the Earth-Sun system affords an uninterrupted view of the Sun and will be home to three new heliophysics missions in 2025: NASA’s Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and NOAA’s Space Weather Follow-On – Lagrange 1 (SWFO – L1).
NASA’s Conceptual Image Lab/Krystofer Kim
From L1, roughly four times farther away than the Moon, Carruthers will capture a comprehensive view of the exosphere using two ultraviolet cameras, a near-field imager and a wide-field imager.
“The near-field imager lets you zoom up really close to see how the exosphere is varying close to the planet,” Glocer said. “The wide-field imager lets you see the full scope and expanse of the exosphere, and how it’s changing far away from the Earth’s surface.”
The two imagers will together map hydrogen atoms as they move through the exosphere and ultimately out to space. But what we learn about atmospheric escape on our home planet applies far beyond it.
“Understanding how that works at Earth will greatly inform our understanding of exoplanets and how quickly their atmospheres can escape,” Waldrop said.
By studying the physics of Earth, the one planet we know that supports life, the Carruthers Geocorona Observatory can help us know what to look for elsewhere in the universe.
The Carruthers Geocorona Observatory mission is led by Lara Waldrop from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. The Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley leads mission implementation, design and development of the payload in collaboration with Utah State University’s Space Dynamics Laboratory. The Carruthers spacecraft was designed and built by BAE Systems. NASA’s Explorers and Heliophysics Projects Division at the agency’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the mission for the agency’s Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
By Miles Hatfield NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
The Milky Way appears above Earth’s bright atmospheric glow in this Aug. 23, 2025, photograph from the International Space Station as it soared 261 miles above southern Iran at approximately 12:54 a.m. local time. The camera was configured for low light and long duration settings.
NASA’s Hubble Sees White Dwarf Eating Piece of Pluto-Like Object
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NASA’s Hubble Sees White Dwarf Eating Piece of Pluto-Like Object
This artist’s concept shows a white dwarf surrounded by a large debris disk. Debris from pieces of a captured, Pluto-like object is falling onto the white dwarf.
Credits: Artwork: NASA, Tim Pyle (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
In our nearby stellar neighborhood, a burned-out star is snacking on a fragment of a Pluto-like object. With its unique ultraviolet capability, only NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope could identify that this meal is taking place.
The stellar remnant is a white dwarf about half the mass of our Sun, but that is densely packed into a body about the size of Earth. Scientists think the dwarf’s immense gravity pulled in and tore apart an icy Pluto analog from the system’s own version of the Kuiper Belt, an icy ring of debris that encircles our solar system. The findings were reported on September 18 in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.
The researchers were able to determine this carnage by analyzing the chemical composition of the doomed object as its pieces fell onto the white dwarf. In particular, they detected “volatiles” — substances with low boiling points — including carbon, sulphur, nitrogen, and a high oxygen content that suggests the strong presence of water.
“We were surprised,” said Snehalata Sahu of the University of Warwick in the United Kingdom. Sahu led the data analysis of a Hubble survey of white dwarfs. “We did not expect to find water or other icy content. This is because the comets and Kuiper Belt-like objects are thrown out of their planetary systems early, as their stars evolve into white dwarfs. But here, we are detecting this very volatile-rich material. This is surprising for astronomers studying white dwarfs as well as exoplanets, planets outside our solar system.”
This artist’s concept shows a white dwarf surrounded by a large debris disk. Debris from pieces of a captured, Pluto-like object is falling onto the white dwarf.
Artwork: NASA, Tim Pyle (NASA/JPL-Caltech)
Only with Hubble
Using Hubble’s Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, the team found that the fragments were composed of 64 percent water ice. The fact that they detected so much ice meant that the pieces were part of a very massive object that formed far out in the star system’s icy Kuiper Belt analog. Using Hubble data, scientists calculated that the object was bigger than typical comets and may be a fragment of an exo-Pluto.
They also detected a large fraction of nitrogen – the highest ever detected in white dwarf debris systems. “We know that Pluto’s surface is covered with nitrogen ices,” said Sahu. “We think that the white dwarf accreted fragments of the crust and mantle of a dwarf planet.”
Accretion of these volatile-rich objects by white dwarfs is very difficult to detect in visible light. These volatile elements can only be detected with Hubble’s unique ultraviolet light sensitivity. In optical light, the white dwarf would appear ordinary.
About 260 light-years away, the white dwarf is a relatively close cosmic neighbor. In the past, when it was a Sun-like star, it would have been expected to host planets and an analog to our Kuiper Belt.
Like seeing our Sun in future
Billions of years from now, when our Sun burns out and collapses to a white dwarf, Kuiper Belt objects will be pulled in by the stellar remnant’s immense gravity. “These planetesimals will then be disrupted and accreted,” said Sahu. “If an alien observer looks into our solar system in the far future, they might see the same kind of remains we see today around this white dwarf.”
The team hopes to use NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to detect molecular features of volatiles such as water vapor and carbonates by observing this white dwarf in infrared light. By further studying white dwarfs, scientists can better understand the frequency and composition of these volatile-rich accretion events.
Sahu is also following the recent discovery of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS. She is eager to learn its chemical composition, especially its fraction of water. “These types of studies will help us learn more about planet formation. They can also help us understand how water is delivered to rocky planets,” said Sahu.
Boris Gänsicke, of the University of Warwick and a visitor at Spain’s Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, was the principal investigator of the Hubble program that led to this discovery. “We observed over 500 white dwarfs with Hubble. We’ve already learned so much about the building blocks and fragments of planets, but I’ve been absolutely thrilled that we now identified a system that resembles the objects in the frigid outer edges of our solar system,” said Gänsicke. “Measuring the composition of an exo-Pluto is an important contribution toward our understanding of the formation and evolution of these bodies.”
The Hubble Space Telescope has been operating for more than three decades and continues to make ground-breaking discoveries that shape our fundamental understanding of the universe. Hubble is a project of international cooperation between NASA and ESA (European Space Agency). NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, manages the telescope and mission operations. Lockheed Martin Space, based in Denver, also supports mission operations at Goddard. The Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, conducts Hubble science operations for NASA.
This artist’s concept shows a white dwarf surrounded by a large debris disk. Debris from pieces of a captured, Pluto-like object is falling onto the white dwarf.
NASA’s Artemis II SLS (Space Launch System) rocket poised to send four astronauts from Earth on a journey around the Moon next year may appear identical to the Artemis I SLS rocket. On closer inspection, though, engineers have upgraded the agency’s Moon rocket inside and out to improve performance, reliability, and safety.
SLS flew a picture perfect first mission on the Artemis I test flight, meeting or exceeding parameters for performance, attitude control, and structural stability to an accuracy of tenths or hundredths of a percent as it sent an uncrewed Orion thousands of miles beyond the Moon. It also returned volumes of invaluable flight data for SLS engineers to analyze to drive improvements.
Teams with NASA’s Exploration Ground Systems integrate the SLS (Space Launch System) Moon rocket with the solid rocket boosters onto mobile launcher 1 inside High Bay 3 of the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in March 2025. Artemis II is the first crewed test flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign and is another step toward missions on the lunar surface and helping the agency prepare for future human missions to Mars.
NASA/Frank Michaux
For Artemis II, the major sections of SLS remain unchanged – a central core stage, four RS-25 main engines, two five-segment solid rocket boosters, the ICPS (interim cryogenic propulsion stage), a launch vehicle stage adapter to hold the ICPS, and an Orion stage adapter connecting SLS to the Orion spacecraft. The difference is in the details.
“While we’re proud of our Artemis I performance, which validated our overall design, we’ve looked at how SLS can give our crews a better ride,” said John Honeycutt, NASA’s SLS Program manager. “Some of our changes respond to specific Artemis II mission requirements while others reflect ongoing analysis and testing, as well as lessons learned from Artemis I.”
Engineers have outfitted the ICPS with optical targets that will serve as visual cues to the astronauts aboard Orion as they manually pilot Orion around the upper stage and practice maneuvers to inform docking operations for Artemis III.
The Artemis II rocket includes an improved navigation system compared to Artemis I. Its communications capability also has been improved by repositioning antennas on the rocket to ensure continuous communications with NASA ground stations and the U.S. Space Force’s Space Launch Delta 45 which controls launches along the Eastern Range.
An emergency detection system on the ICPS allows the rocket to sense and respond to problems and notify the crew. The flight safety system adds a time delay to the self-destruct system to allow time for Orion’s escape system to pull the capsule to safety in event of an abort.
The separation motors that push the solid rocket booster away after the elements are no longer needed were angled an additional 15 degrees to increase separation clearance as the rest of the rocket speeds by.
Additionally, SLS will jettison the spent boosters four seconds earlier during Artemis II ascent than occurred during Artemis I. Dropping the boosters several seconds closer to the end of their burn will give engineers flight data to correlate with projections that shedding the boosters several seconds sooner will yield approximately 1,600 pounds of payload to Earth orbit for future SLS flights.
Engineers have incorporated additional improvements based on lessons learned from Artemis I. During the Artemis I test flight the SLS rocket experienced higher-than-expected vibrations near the solid rocket booster attachment points that was caused by unsteady airflow.
To steady the airflow, a pair of six-foot-long strakes flanking each booster’s forward connection points on the SLS intertank will smooth vibrations induced by airflow during ascent, and the rocket’s electronics system was requalified to endure higher levels of vibrations.
Engineers updated the core stage power distribution control unit, mounted in the intertank, which controls power to the rocket’s other electronics and protects against electrical hazards.
These improvements have led to an enhanced rocket to support crew as part of NASA’s Golden Age of innovation and exploration.
The approximately 10-day Artemis II test flight is the first crewed flight under NASA’s Artemis campaign. It is another step toward new U.S.-crewed missions on the Moon’s surface that will help the agency prepare to send the first astronauts – Americans – to Mars.
