Precision Time Protocol Based Trilateration for Planetary Navigation

NASA's vision for planetary exploration requires development and field testing of the key technologies required for extended habitation. To support extended lunar operations with technologies directly extensible to the Mars environment, a high fidelity navigation system is needed. Precision localization and route mapping is required for planetary EVA, manned rovers and lunar surface mobility units. The innovation is the establishment of a fault tolerant, field scalable, high precision navigation system that can and support the size, weight, and power (SWaP) goals by integrating mature technologies to provide an navigation capability while naturally supporting data and voice communications on the same network. Perhaps most importantly, this system is bidirectional such that position information is provided to both the base and the mobile units. Such a system provides a precise and reliable navigation backbone to support traverse-path planning systems and other mapping applications and establishes a core infrastructure for long term occupation.