Lunar Link balloons and team

Engineers from the Lunar Link team and NASA's Johnson Space Center at Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France, next to the large balloons used to test antenna deployment.

ESA’s Lunar Link telecommunications element has completed its final major integration and testing campaign at Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France. 

Originally developed to be integrated on NASA's HALO habitation module for the Gateway to provide communications between the orbiting station and Moon explorers, Lunar Link reached completion as plans for the programme changed. Following NASA’s decision earlier this year to pause work on the Gateway, ESA is studying how Lunar Link’s capabilities could be used for future lunar missions.

Over the summer, a team from NASA’s Johnson Space Center joined the European Lunar Link team at Thales Alenia Space in Cannes, France, for an end-to-end communications demonstration. The NASA team brought a large set of racks capable of simulating a user on the Moon, allowing engineers to establish and test communications through Lunar Link, including encryption. The demonstration was successful, showing the system performs exactly as intended.