U.S. Army soldiers with the 1st Multi-Domain Task Force operate a Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon launcher.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has launched a competition for “visionary business ideas” for how to use its proposed “Moonlight” project, a constellation of communication and navigation satellites around the Moon.
As part of a competition, ESA plans to offer one-year contracts to develop and assess the feasibility of the ideas, as well as demand from potential customers, it said Oct. 9. The agency wants proposals on how its constellation might support lunar- and Earth-based businesses.
The ESA’s Moonlight project is an effort to develop a privately operated, but partially publicly funded constellation of navigation and communication satellites orbiting the Moon that could serve scientific and commercial missions. ESA would be an anchor customer for the service. Moonlight satellites are to adopt the LunaNet Interoperability Specification, a framework of agreed-upon ESA/NASA technical standards for lunar communications and navigation services.
The space agency cites a projection that total lunar economy revenue opportunities could top €40 billion ($42.2 billion) over the next decade and rise to almost €160 billion by 2040. It notes that “hundreds of missions to the Moon are due to be launched in the coming years.”
Potential uses for the communications satellites include lunar utility companies using connectivity to manage remote power generation, storage and distribution, ESA says. Or mining companies might use positioning information from navigation satellites to locate and extract water from the Moon, which could then be converted into oxygen for breathing and hydrogen for rocket propellant, the agency suggests.
ESA says data companies might want to use communications satellites to transfer information to secure data centers on the Moon’s poles.
“Entertainment companies could exploit the lunar environment for games, movies and other leisure activities that use lunar positioning and data exchange between the Moon and Earth,” it says.
Ultimately, ESA sees a navigation and communications satellite constellation as key infrastructure for the lunar economy, enabling more flexibility in choosing landing sites, operating longer on the surface, powering greater autonomy for equipment and creating new mission concepts. Nearby orbiting satellites may also allow lunar landers or rovers to carry smaller, less powerful navigation and communications equipment, which would free up space for additional payloads.
