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The goal of this study was to develop a design for a lunar habitat in the close vicinity of one of the lunar poles and to demonstrate the feasibility of the suggested design in view of the available resources. The habitat should operate self-sufficiently in the long term by producing and recycling its own oxygen and food inside large greenhouses and almost exclusively by using solar irradiation power. The proposed  concept features a combination of:

SMARTIE (Smart Resource Management based on Internet of Things to support Off-Earth Manufacturing of Lunar Infrastructures) is an ESA study to assess the requirements, architecture, hardware and software needs and costs for implementation of an Internet of Manufacturing Things (IoMT) for a lunar human base and associated infrastructure. 

Within the framework of ESA’s Alcantara initiative international R&D Studies were funded.

The initial step of the analysis is represented by the definition of the GNSS capabilities and receiver requirements in the environment of interest. The service volume concept has been introduced to this aim, and recent studies pointed out the interest to define and include GNSS performance above the altitude of the constellation itself [1], [2]. It is well known that signals, even if primarily broadcast from GNSS sources in order to serve Earth surface and proximity (i.e. with a beam directed nadir), are available at a limited extent also above the constellation.