Astrobotic and CMU advance distributed nav system for Moon missions

by Clarence Oxford
Los Angeles CA (SPX) Mar 30, 2026
Astrobotic and Carnegie Mellon University have advanced their Distributed Agent Localization Estimation for spaceCraft, or DALEC, navigation system to Technology Readiness Level 5 under a NASA Small Business Technology Transfer Phase II award, moving it closer to deployment on the lunar surface. DALEC is designed to deliver positioning, navigation, and timing services in environments where GPS is unavailable, including the Moon, by networking multiple spacecraft, rovers, and other assets into a coordinated navigation swarm.

Each DALEC-enabled asset uses onboard sensors such as cameras and laser scanners to estimate its own position and motion. Those estimates are then shared wirelessly among nearby assets and combined using distributed algorithms that refine each agent's location solution, improving accuracy and resilience over what any single platform or sensor could achieve alone.

Astrobotic Senior Project Manager Sean McGill said that reliable positioning, navigation, and timing will form the backbone of shared lunar infrastructure that multiple missions can trust. He explained that DALEC provides an interoperable navigation capability suited to a future Moon where many independent spacecraft, rovers, and surface systems must operate together, noting that the project blends embedded systems development with advanced algorithms to tackle challenges that single-sensor approaches cannot solve.

In operation, DALEC turns a collection of vehicles, landers, and fixed beacons into a coordinated system sometimes described as a swarm. Working cooperatively, these agents can map unknown terrain, navigate rough or poorly lit regions, plan safer traverse routes, and coordinate tasks such as science surveys, resource prospecting, construction work, or exploration of caves and lava tubes across extended areas.

These capabilities align with anticipated needs for upcoming Artemis campaigns, where astronauts, pressurized and unpressurized vehicles, and robotic systems must work together over wide swaths of the lunar surface. A DALEC-based navigation layer could help crews and robots maintain situational awareness, track one another's positions, and synchronize activities even in areas with limited direct line-of-sight to Earth.

In a simulated test mission, the team used four self-driving rovers to build a circular dirt wall, or berm, around a landing site to shield nearby infrastructure from debris kicked up by future landings. The lander that delivered the rovers and a nearby charging station remained in fixed locations, providing stable reference points and demonstrating how DALEC can use both mobile and stationary nodes to support precise navigation for complex construction tasks.

DALEC is intended to function as a core localization and mapping service within a broader autonomous agent framework and fits into Astrobotic's LunaGrid infrastructure concepts for sustained lunar operations. By enabling interoperable, low-bandwidth sharing of navigation data among many agents, the system supports a distributed PNT architecture that can grow as more spacecraft and surface assets arrive on the Moon.

Technically, DALEC fuses visual odometry with other onboard sensing and ultra-wideband radio ranging between agents. This combination of sensing modes helps maintain robust performance when individual sensors degrade or lose fidelity, such as in areas with uniform terrain, rapidly changing illumination, or partial sensor failures, and allows the network to continue functioning despite local issues.

The navigation package is designed as a flexible, low size, weight, power, and cost unit that can be integrated on a wide variety of lunar platforms. Any DALEC-equipped asset can communicate with any other, making it possible to mix and match landers, rovers, infrastructure nodes, and future vehicles into a shared navigation mesh without mission-specific redesigns.

During Phase II, Astrobotic and CMU tested the fully integrated system in software simulation, in an indoor laboratory setting, and in an outdoor quarry chosen to approximate the rough, rocky terrain and open vistas of lunar landscapes. Outdoor demonstrations used multiple mobile agents and stationary landmarks connected over a low-bandwidth mesh network, validating the distributed localization algorithms and embedded electronics in conditions relevant to lunar operations.

Key results from the two-year effort include decentralized multi-agent localization that significantly improves position estimates over non-collaborative methods, robustness to sensor dropouts, and stable real-time software running on embedded Linux hardware. The team also showed that agents could join and leave the network without disrupting overall performance and that the system can operate effectively with minimal communications bandwidth.

The project produced multi-agent simulation tools that model realistic sensors and communication links, giving engineers a way to explore new mission concepts and configurations before hardware reaches the field. These tools can help mission planners test different combinations of mobile and fixed nodes, communication constraints, and operational scenarios tailored to specific lunar regions or tasks.

The Phase II campaign concluded in January with DALEC meeting NASA's criteria for TRL 5, indicating successful validation of components and configurations in relevant environments. Astrobotic is now assessing options to further mature the technology and chart a path toward a flight-ready product that can support future lunar missions and a scalable, distributed PNT infrastructure on the Moon.