ESA’s European Large Logistics Lander – a lunar lander that could be used to supply the proposed lunar village or deliver scientific missions to the Moon’s surface – is being designed so that it can benefit from the Moonlight constellation for telecommunications and navigation.

Using Moonlight means the lander will not have to only rely on a line-of-sight connection with the Gateway. Moonlight will improve the accuracy of its landing, and enable access to areas out of sight of the Gateway. Science missions using Moonlight will be able to live stream more high-quality video than would be possible without it, increasing the volumes of data and the speed of transfer and thus enabling better science to be done.

Once Moonlight is in place, companies could create new services in industries such as education, media and entertainment – as well as inspiring young people to study science, technology, engineering and maths, which creates a highly qualified future workforce.

Moonlight will be part of the ESA proposals due to be approved and funded at the Council of Ministers in November – a meeting of government ministers from each of ESA’s 22 Member States that last met in 2019 to establish ESA’s strategic direction and funding.

Space companies in Europe and Canada will be invited to tender for the initial Moonlight work in December.