Description: NASA is preparing to return to the Moon with a variety of lunar missions, from autonomous unmanned lunar landers to Human Landing Systems (HLS). That will be enabled by a mature and reliable Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) System – inclusive of a Psionic Space Navigation Doppler LiDAR (PSNDL) sensor, Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU), and Terrain Contour Matching (TERCOM) that reduces the landing risk and increases the probability of success for each mission. Here, Psionic and Draper propose a flight test demonstration of the latest generation PSNDL to validate its critical role for precision navigation for Artemis, CLPS and other landing missions. This high-altitude, high-speed trajectory flight test will advance the TRL status to help NASA and U.S. commercial space companies successfully reach the Moon using the most efficient and reliable navigation system. This navigation flight demonstration satisfies the areas of interest to NASA in Topic 1 of this Tipping Point program – advancing technologies for precision landing and Cislunar operations that ensure a sustainable and robust lunar economy, by increasing capability and reducing risk. This GNC navigation system validation flight significantly leverages NASA's current investments in precision landing and location navigation with an integrated flight demonstration in a relevant environment and with a relevant trajectory is critical for validation. In addition, the analysis of flight performance data, including vehicle engineering data to be acquired through this test provides post-flight opportunities for improvements tested through simulations. Draper and Psionic will collaborate with NASA by sharing flight and test data from this Tipping Point program. That will help NASA to validate modeling tools and allow simulations that investigate data features to advance the overall understanding of the technology's performance in certain conditions.

Benefits: The proposed flight demonstration and navigation system updates, driven by findings from simulation-based analysis of flight data, provide a significant advancement in human class (Class A/B) navigation systems for lunar and Mars missions. Current NDL navigation solu tions have demonstrated improving fidelity over the decade. Data from proposed flights combined with simulations will guide future system designs. While the NASA NDL was originally built to support Artemis, commercial customers supporting CLPS missions – such as Intuitive Machines, Masten, ispace, and Astrobotic - have determined the NASA ETU is too heavy, too large, and too expensive. The new PSNDL was designed to overcome these issues by reducing SWaP and cost, with over 50% reduction in size and mass. Since the new smaller and more powerful PSNDL navigation capability has not been demonstrated in a realistic lunar trajectory scenario, this proposal delivers a significant improvement in the commercial market readiness of high-reliability lunar and Mars precision landing navigation subsystems.