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Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corporation has applied to operate hundreds of space stations on the Moon's surface and in orbit. The company filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in mid-March, which was made public last week. It builds on Lockheed's lunar network Parsec and shares details about the different items that will communicate with Earth through it. The list includes spacesuits, lunar rovers, lunar landers, terminals and payloads as part of a lunar economy that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) aims to build through its Artemis program.

Lockheed Adds Five Earth Stations To Its Lunar Network & Shares Plans For Lunar Economy

Lockheed created some buzz earlier this year when it announced that a subsidiary, Crescent Space Services LLC, will operate its Parsec network. Parsec is designed as a network of small satellites in lunar orbit, enabling objects on the surface to communicate with each other and with Earth. It will also allow vehicles in lunar orbit to send data and information back to Earth. Lockheed had announced the network back in 2021 and filed an application with the FCC the next year in February.

The 2022 application shared that initially, two satellites will be launched. The first was expected to enter orbit in October this year and revolve around the Moon at an apogee of roughly 10,000 kilometers and a perigee of approximately 2,500 kilometers. The application added that the spacecraft will communicate with Earth through three ground stations in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia. The Earth stations were estimated to provide 97.2% coverage of the Moon and have a line of sight 22.5% of the time. A June 2022 document from NASA reiterated a Q4 2023 launch.

Parsec is designed to be used by both NASA and other customers to enable their lunar assets to communicate with Earth and each other and provide users the capability to send and receive spacecraft commands.

The Parsec communications architecture. Image: Lockheed Martin

Building on this, the latest application reveals more than two hundred different objects that will communicate with Parsec. It also adds that the first station to use Parsec for communications is NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander. The lander's transportation to the Moon was contracted to Firefly Aerospace, who in turn will use SpaceX's Falon 9 rocket, and the first Parsec satellite is expected to launch in 2025.

The 230 lunar objects, which Lockheed calls 'space stations' in its application, will be launched during the project's first phase. These primarily cover robotic landers and payloads, lunar vehicles, human landing systems, spacesuits and handheld terminals. Their applications cover different purposes, such as exploring the Moon's surface, conducting experiments and enabling astronauts to land and take off from the Moon and live on it.

Lockheed has also added five new Earth stations to communicate with the satellites. These stations will be located in Antarctica, Chilen, Norway and Sweden - with the locations for the stations in the U.S. and Australia changed. These changes increase lunar coverage to 100% and ensure that the Moon is visible from at least two stations for more than 99% of the time.

Additionally, while the firm has sought approval only for the Phase 1 equipment, it has also shared details about other stations populating Phases Two and Three. Out of these, phase three includes a nuclear fission power station, with Lockheed aiming to connect it to the Earth and lunar assets to monitor health and operations. It explains that the Phase 3 stations are only for informational purposes, and Phase 2 includes equipment for mining ice and water and lunar manufacturing systems.