The same precision sensor that kept Webb locked on galaxies 13 billion light-years away has been quietly miniaturized — and it's about to solve the navigation problem nobody wanted to discuss on the way to the Moon

The same precision sensor that kept Webb locked on galaxies 13 billion light-years away has been quietly miniaturized — and it's about to solve the navigation problem nobody wanted to discuss on the way to the Moon

Lunar missions are running into a navigation wall. Landers heading for the south pole this decade cannot rely on GPS, the Moon has no positioning constellation of its own yet, and the commercial cadence of flights is accelerating faster than the infrastructure meant to guide them. Every recent lunar landing failure has put the same uncomfortable question in front of operators and investors: how does a spacecraft know exactly where it is and whic…