ESA – P. Carril

• Dozens of moon missions are planned within the next decade.
• But right now, there is no satellite navigation system between the Earth and the moon.
• NASA and ESA are developing ways to help rockets navigate to the moon autonomously.

When NASA’s Artemis 1 mission successfully flew around the moon in November, it showed the world that humans are on track to go back.

NASA and the European Space Agency aim to put boots on the moon by 2025 and set up a permanent lunar base orbiting it within the next couple of years. China and Russia are also working together to establish a separate lunar base, with crewed landings set for 2036.

But right now, there is no GPS to get us there. Astronauts can’t navigate autonomously in deep space, and every mission relies on expertly trained engineers constantly directing the missions from the ground.

That will quickly become unsustainable with missions shuttling back and forth.

Space agencies are working to put satellite navigation, or satnav, on rockets traveling the 239,000 miles between Earth and the moon. They’re also planning to build a whole new navigation network around the moon. Here’s how.

How space agencies navigate today is cumbersome and expensive

It took hundreds of people to help Apollo mission rockets navigate to the moon. Here Apollo 11 staff are watching it lift off on July 16, 1969.

NASA

Today, the only way to go from point A to point B in space is to make complicated calculations based on physics, custom to every mission.

As the spacecraft moves through space, the only point of reference is the Earth. So it needs to ping a signal back to the Earth to understand where it is, which means there are massive blind spots.

NASA completely lost communication with Orion, the spacecraft used in the Artemis 1 mission, when it went behind the moon. For a few minutes, all the engineers could do was hold their breath and hope they’d see the spacecraft emerge unscathed on the other side.

This is resource-intensive and expensive, Javier Ventura-Traveset, chief engineer of ESA’s Galileo Navigation Science Office, told Insider. (The US government runs GPS; Galileo is the European version.)

What space exploration needs now is a way for spacecraft to triangulate their position from space, so they can navigate autonomously without input from the Earth.

Using Earth’s satellites to go to the moon could help

Surprisingly, the cheapest way to bring satnav to deep space is to harness the satellites around the Earth, Elizabeth Rooney, a senior engineer for Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd, told Insider. The company is working with ESA to develop satellite navigation in space.

There are a few big problems with this approach. Chief among them is that these satellites point toward the Earth.

That means that most of the satellites’ signal is blocked and only a little spills over. The bit that spills over is a lot weaker than the main signal, and it gets even weaker further away from Earth.

Beyond the Earth’s immediate perimeter, called here the space service volume, the earth blocks a lot of the signal coming from earth’s navigation satellites (here called GNSS satellites, for Global Navigation Satellite System).

NASA

Given all these constraints, it could seem like using this signal to navigate to the moon would be impossible. But engineers have spent decades developing sensitive detectors that could harness that signal from deep space.

And they succeeded. 

In 2019, four satellites were able to determine their position in space using signals from the Earth’s GPS satellites.

They were 116,300 miles away — about halfway to the moon, Ventura-Traveset said.

We really need a way to go all the way to the moon autonomously

The next frontier is detecting that signal on the other half of the journey. But Ventura-Traveset is confident.

ESA and NASA have been refining their detectors that could harness signals from the Earth’s satellites, and are poised to test them on upcoming moon missions.

As part of ESA’s initiative, a detector will be mounted on a satellite orbiting the moon, called Lunar Pathfinder, to see if it can navigate autonomously.

ESA-K Oldenburg/Insider

ESA’s receiver, called NaviMoon, is due to launch onboard the Lunar Pathfinder satellite in 2025 or 2026. ESA predicts NaviMoon should be able to determine the satellite’s position with a precision of about 60 meters (about 200 feet), Ventura-Traveset said.

The hope is that thanks to this detector, the satellite should be able to navigate autonomously around the moon, he said. It’s also very lightweight, about 4 kilograms (8 pounds) altogether, and could replace a lot of the heavier equipment onboard a spacecraft.

The NaviMoon satnav receiver being tested.

SSTL

NASA is also working on detectors, developed with the Italian Space Agency. They aim to launch the first of these receptors to the surface of the moon in 2024 as part of the Lunar GNSS Receiver Experiment.

There is a “little bit of a friendly competitive race” between ESA and NASA to bring Earth satnav signal to the moon, James Joseph “JJ” Miller, deputy director for Policy and Strategic Communications within the Space Communications and Navigation Program at NASA Headquarters, told Insider in an interview.

Miller said many other countries have started looking to invest in deep-space navigation technology. 

“Everyone has come to understand that this is an emerging user that is not going away, that we actually have to prepare and make the cis-lunar space, all the space between the Earth and the moon, as robust and reliable as possible with these signals,” he said.

Eventually, we’ll need a satellite navigation network around the moon

In the second phase of ESA’s Moonlight, a network of satellites should help triangulate the position of spacecrafts at the surface.

ESA-K Oldenburg/Insider

The signal from Earth’s satellites may get spacecraft all the way to the moon, but once they’re on the surface, the signal won’t be very useful.

At that point, these signals can only reach what’s visible from the Earth, so the dark side of the moon and moon poles are off-limits.

So the plan is to give the moon its very own fleet of communication and navigation satellites, called the Moonlight initiative. The first node in Moonlight would be NASA’s Pathfinder satellite.

Ventura-Traveset said ESA aims to test a basic infrastructure of Moonlight by 2027, and a more comprehensive infrastructure by 2030.

NASA is also working on building its own network, called LunaNet. NASA’s Gateway, a space station the agency aims to send to orbit the moon, would be another node in the network.

“We would imagine a kind of architecture that includes both NASA and ESA satellites working together,” NASA’s Miller said.

Moon settlers will need high-speed internet

Satellites could help future moon astronauts navigate on the moon, as can be seen in this artist’s impression.

ESA

There is a more commercial aspect to bringing humans back to the moon. In the long run, moon settlers would need to set up camp so they can mine for minerals and water — which could be used to fuel rockets on the way to Mars.

Moon visitors will need to be able to communicate with Earth, talk to each other effectively, and be entertained, Ventura-Traveset said.

Down the line, moon settlers could have access to high-speed internet, video-conference with loved ones on Earth, stream shows, and create their own content from space, Ventura-Traveset said.

“I don’t think there’s anyone that would argue that that’s not the way we’re gonna go,” Ventura-Traveset said.

Douglas Graham/CQ Roll Call

• The 2024 Senate elections — which will run concurrent with the presidential race — are approaching.
• Democrats will have to defend several vulnerable incumbents in swing and GOP-heavy states.
• However, the party has held their own in the last three cycles in navigating tough Senate races.

In the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats defied political expectations by holding on to their Senate majority, with every incumbent securing reelection and Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. John Fetterman flipping the open seat being vacated by retiring Republican Sen. Pat Toomey.

Not only will Democrats retain control of the chamber in January, but the upper chamber will shift from a 50-50 split — with Senate control currently resting on Vice President Kamala Harris’ tiebreaking abilities — to a 51-49 majority led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York. Despite Arizona Sen. Kyrsten switching from the Democratic Party to register as an Independent, she will continue to retain her committee assignments through her former party, and the lawmaker herself downplayed any notion that she would change her voting habits.

However, the class of senators who were elected and reelected in 2018 — a Democratic wave year that saw several vulnerable red-state members of the party win and lose — will face a challenging map in 2024.

A lot of the party’s performance will be tied to President Joe Biden, who has not yet announced if he is running for reelection, though it is expected that he will do so. But former President Donald Trump — whose political brand took a huge hit last month after he endorsed multiple candidates who lost their races — has already thrown his hat into the race.

In 2024, 34 senators will be up for reelection: 20 Democrats, 11 Republicans, and three Independents.

Here are some of the key states that both parties will likely target:

Arizona

Sinema’s party switch gave Democrats jitters while they were still rejoicing Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock’s runoff victory, but members appear assured that her decision won’t impact the party’s ability to control committee assignments and approve judicial nominations. But Sinema’s election itself is another matter; she has not yet announced whether she will run for reelection in 2024. If she runs again — along with a candidate like Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego — they could very well end up in a three-way race with a Republican candidate.

Such a scenario would not only complicate Sinema’s standing in the Senate, but force Democrats to decide whether they will back her candidacy or get behind a Democratic candidate. Democrats have made major inroads in Arizona in recent years, and the party would like to keep the seat out of GOP hands.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan.

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Michigan

Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow won reelection to a fourth term in 2018 by 6.5% against now-Republican Rep.-elect John James, which was her closest race since she was first elected to the Senate in 2000. Republicans would very much like to flip this seat, but Michigan Democrats had a banner year in November — sweeping the top statewide offices and retaking control of the full legislature — and Biden is expected to compete hard in the state if he runs for reelection.

Montana

Democratic Sen. Jon Tester is a political survivor, having first won in conservative-leaning Montana in 2006 before winning tough reelection contests in 2012 and 2018. He has not yet decided if he will run in 2024, but Republicans have been eyeing his seat for years. Despite the GOP orientation of the state, Tester has a solid political brand and has been able to appeal to many of the state’s Independents and Republicans in past elections.

Nevada

Democratic Sen. Jacky Rosen is running for a second term in office in one of the most competitive battleground states in the country. In 2018, Rosen, then a first-term congresswoman, ousted then-GOP Sen. Dean Heller by 5 points.

In 2024, Rosen will be running for reelection when Nevada will be a top target for the eventual presidential nominees of both parties.

Sen. Sherrod Brown of Ohio.

AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib

Ohio

Sherrod Brown, who was also elected to the Senate in 2006, has maintained a strong populist connection with his constituents despite the continued reddening of Ohio, which was once the nation’s premier swing state. Republicans will target this seat, but Brown has proven to be an effective candidate and one who has been adept at winning over Independents and even a slice of GOP voters.

Pennsylvania

Bob Casey Jr. has won all three of his Senate races with relative ease since first being elected to the upper chamber in 2006. If he runs again, he’ll have the benefit of running as a Democrat in a presidential year where turnout in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh are likely to be very high. However, Casey has also generally done well in many of the state’s working-class town and cities, and could post an electoral performance similar to Fetterman.

West Virginia

Sen. Joe Manchin has not yet announced his intentions for 2024, but he is likely the only Democrat who can hold the seat in such a challenging state for his party. West Virginia was Trump’s second-best performing state in the 2020 election, so Manchin will have to win a lot of ticket-splitters to secure another term in the nation’s capital. But he has done it before, winning in 2018 despite Republicans going all-out to defeat him.

GOP Rep. Alex Mooney has already announced that he will run for the seat.

Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Wisconsin

Sen. Tammy Baldwin has not said whether she’ll seek a third term in the upper chamber, but even in politically-polarized Wisconsin, she has been able to win over many rural and exurban voters in addition to racking up large margins in the Democratic-heavy population centers of Milwaukee and Madison.

Republicans will almost certainly try to field a strong candidate, but Baldwin has been able to navigate the divides in her state in a way that has bedeviled members of both parties.

AP Photo/Kostiantyn Liberov

• When Russian forces invaded Ukraine in late February, Putin and other observers expected the country to crumble fast.
• Over 10 months later Ukraine still stands, and its forces has even liberated occupied lands.
• Throughout this conflict, there have been surprises on both sides. Here are 5 of the biggest twists.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expected victory to come quickly and without trouble when his forces invaded Ukraine. 

When the Russian leader delivered his televised war declaration on February 24, sending his troops forward to carry out a large-scale invasion, he anticipated that Kyiv would fall in a matter of days — a grave assessment echoed by US and Western intelligence, as well as many think tank experts and analysts.

More than 10 months later, the city of nearly 3 million people remains in Ukrainian hands. The country’s forces have managed to not only weather Moscow’s invasion on multiple fronts, but have even pushed Russian troops back in some areas, liberating thousands of square miles of territory that had fallen to Russian troops early in the war.   

US officials have declared Putin’s war efforts in Ukraine a “failure.” That said, there is still no end in sight for the sight for this devastating conflict that has caused hundreds of thousands of casualties and left Ukrainian cities in ruins. 

The poor performance of the Russian military has surprised Putin and other observers, but it’s only one of several unexpected twists in the past 10 months of war. Here are some other unforeseen moments. 

The way Russia invaded and the failures that came with itUkrainian soldiers at a checkpoint in Kyiv, Ukraine, on February 25, 2022.

Anastasia Vlasova/Getty Images

The earliest — and perhaps biggest — surprise was the way that Russia carried out its invasion of Ukraine. 

Seeming to overestimate the strength of his armed forces and underestimate the will of Ukraine to resist, Putin — and some Western intelligence — expected Kyiv would not be able to hold out more than a few days. 

Miscalculations by Russian leadership coupled with the poor communication of objectives to officers and troops tasked with fighting the war, however, let to an array of Russian mistakes and blunders during the early days of the war, like units finding themselves isolated or struggling with substantial logistical problems.

Russian forces were expected to move in large groups consisting of soldiers, armor, and artillery, conducting combined arms warfare with air support and other assets, but that didn’t happen.

“We would have thought that they would have done a much more deliberate, well-thought-through operation. That is not what they did,” Jeffrey Edmonds, a Russia expert at the Center for Naval Analyses and former CIA military analyst, told Insider, explaining that Russia didn’t lead with a massive air campaign and its soldiers were basically just told to drive to Kyiv.

“That’s not the way we at all thought that they would invade,” he said. 

Ukraine’s ability to not only stop the Russians but drive them backUkrainian artillery unit fires with a 2S7-Pion, a self-propelled gun, at a position near a frontline in Kharkiv region on August 26, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Photo by IHOR THACHEV/AFP via Getty Images

Heading into the war, Russia greatly underestimated the will of the Ukrainian people to defend their homeland and the strength and combat capability of the country’s military. 

“Another surprise was the level of capability of the Ukrainians to defend against the invasion, despite Russian screw ups,” Edmonds said. “And that’s continued throughout.”

Ukraine managed to not only protect Kyiv against the advancing Russian troops, but it even managed to force their retreat from the capital region after just a few weeks. Beyond that, Ukrainian troops have since managed to liberate thousands of square miles of territory from Russian occupation during various counteroffensives along the war’s northeastern and southern fronts.

One significant achievement was the recent liberation of Kherson. This southern city was the first major city captured by Putin’s forces and the only regional capital Russian troops had managed to seize. It was a big early war win for Russia, but it was unable to hold it.

The weapons Ukraine had to fight the war and the way they were used on the battlefield have made a tremendous difference.

Edmonds said the effectiveness of US-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), and Ukraine’s ability to integrate these weapons into its arsenal, were unexpected. These rocket launchers were much-sought-after by Ukraine, and quickly became celebrated among the country’s armed forces and its top officials for the damage they could deliver to Russian forces.  

The Kharkiv counteroffensive that hit in the northeast as everyone was looking southUkrainian troops fire an M777 howitzer in the Kharkiv Region on July 28, 2022.

Vyacheslav Madiyevskyy/Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images

After months of fighting in a grinding and slow-moving conflict in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, Kyiv’s forces launched two major counteroffensives along the war’s northeastern and southern fronts.

Only the southern offensive to retake Kherson had been expected, as Ukraine had been telegraphing that one for months. As Russian troops moved to defend along the southern front, Ukrainian forces suddenly hit hard from unexpected direction.

Ukraine’s northeastern counteroffensive, which was focused in the Kharkiv region, began in late summer and featured a blitz-style push on Russian positions. The advance quickly turned into a rout that forced Russian troops to abandon massive amounts of weaponry and saw Ukraine liberate huge chunks of land.  

Edmonds said the Kharkiv counteroffensive was a “big surprise” to everyone, including the Ukrainians, especially considering the “extent and speed” of Ukraine’s advances. 

Ukraine has “shown a remarkable ability to take advantages of opportunities that present themselves on the battlefield, and the current counteroffensive in Kharkiv is no exception to that,” Pentagon Press Secretary Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said in mid-September. 

Explosive attacks behind Russian lines that stirred instability and fear at rear positionsIn this image taken from video provided by the Russian Defense Ministry Press Service, a Tu-95 strategic bomber of the Russian air force prepares to take off from an air base in Engels near the Volga River in Russia, Monday, Jan. 24, 2022.

Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP

Another unexpected aspect of the war in Ukraine has been the number of attacks far behind the line in Russian-controlled territory. There have been attacks in occupied areas like the Crimean peninsula but also in Russia.

Earlier this month, a handful of Russian bases — two of them located hundreds of miles from the Ukraine border — were rocked by explosions. The attacks were reportedly the result of drones launched from Ukrainian territory, though Kyiv denied involvement. 

The Russian defense ministry blamed the attacks on Soviet-era drones. Although there was some speculation on the type, it is unclear. That Russian bases could be targeted so deep within the country raised eyebrows, as it pointed to a major force protection failure and a longer reach than expected for Ukraine.

“I don’t think anybody foresaw them having UAV capability that could reach into Russia and attack strategic air bases,” Edmonds said.

And those strikes were not isolated instances. A few weeks prior, Ukraine appeared to attack Russia’s naval forces at southern Crimea’s Sevastopol using unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) and UAVs.  

Although the use of drones throughout this conflict has not been a surprise, Edmonds said that “some of the ways in which they’ve been used, and the success of the operations with them, have been somewhat surprising.”

The extent of Western support for UkrainePresident Joe Biden gives a press conference after the NATO summit in Brussels, on June 14, 2021.

Olivier Hoslet/Getty Images

Immediately after Russia’s February 24 invasion, Western countries wasted no time in banding together to condemn Putin for launching the attack — a response that the Russian leader did not anticipate, at least not at the level seen throughout the war.

Ten months into this conflict, countries from NATO and the European Union have since stayed relatively unified in their support for Ukraine, providing military and humanitarian aid while also slapping round after round of sanctions on Russia. 

Putin’s miscalculations on the strength of a united Western response, meanwhile, have opened the door to NATO expansion, something he has historically been strongly against. The war has even led some countries — like Germany and Switzerland — to reverse various military, foreign, and financial policies. 

“I think both the US response and the European solidarity on [the war] were surprising to everybody.” Edmonds said. “I just think there’s this upwelling feeling of like, this just isn’t acceptable.”

For now, the war continues with no clear immediate off ramp. Despite significant setbacks for Russia in this conflict, Moscow has signaled that it intends to continue its fight. Putin himself has said this will be a long process, and Ukraine is bracing for the possibility of new Russian offensives in the new year.

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When a politician is collapsing under the weight of his own worsening scandals, the series of events that plays out is so often the same familiar pattern. First the politician insists the entire scandal is false and attacks the news outlet that first reported it. Then as other news outlets dive in and help confirm the allegations, the politician tries a new strategy. He confesses to the things that have been proven true, even while downplaying them, and denies all the other allegations that haven’t yet been proven true – in the faint hope that the media won’t be able to substantiate the rest of it.

Thus far we’ve seen George Santos follow this pattern pretty much to the letter. It’s not clear if he’s been listening to the kinds of crisis managers who usually handle this sort of thing, or if it’s just human nature to go through these response stages. In any case, Santos is now trying the next step along the line. According to ABC News, he’s promising not to seek reelection, in the hope that this will be enough to get the target off his back and allow him to finish out his one term.

Usually it’s pretty obvious why a scandalized political office holder tries to pull off this kind of compromise. No one wants to have to resign in disgrace, right? They want to finish out their term and then insist they left office on their own terms. And deep down they’re hoping that by the end of their term the heat will have died down, and maybe they can quietly seek reelection after all.

But with Santos, we may be seeing a different familiar pattern play out. When political office holders come to fear they’re going to be criminally indicted, they’ll often try to hold onto their office for as long as possible, in the hope of ultimately using their resignation as a bargaining chip in any plea deal negotiation. This may sound odd, but we’ve seen it play out with two different House Republicans in the past five years alone.

So it’s entirely plausible that Santos is promising not to seek reelection in the hope that this will allow him to take office and remain in office through his indictment, so he can try to include his resignation as part of the plea deal he’ll inevitably have to cut. Of course this doesn’t mean Santos’ ploy will succeed.

The last two House Republicans who were facing indictment were merely on the hook for financial crimes. In contrast George Santos is an embarrassment and punchline across the board, so he may not be able to withstand the pressure and scrutiny of remaining in office long enough to use it in a plea deal.

At some point we’re going to have to rewrite the law so that office holders who are under criminal investigation like Santos don’t have a built-in incentive to remain in office until they’re indicted. Things shouldn’t work that way. That said, the longer Santos remains in the House, the more the Democrats will be able to use him as a weapon against every other House Republican. So if House Republicans don’t have the guts to expel Santos, then so be it.

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