Original title: Can Julia land on the Moon? On the development of a GNC simulation framework for the Argonaut lunar lander
Francesco Capolupo, Frederik Markus · September 2026
Landing a spacecraft on the Moon requires precise software for Guidance, Navigation, and Control, or GNCAlgorithms that guide, navigate, and control a spacecraft during landing.. Engineers use GNC to steer, track, and stabilize the lander. Testing these complex flight steps usually requires switching between different software tools. To solve this, researchers at the European Space Agency built a simulation framework named ATLAS using the Julia programming language for the Argonaut lunar lander. ATLAS simulates the entire descent and landing phase in a single environment. It models spacecraft motion, shifting fuel, changing weight, sensors, motors, and flight software running at different speeds. The researchers found that Julia is fast, flexible, and capable. It successfully handles early design studies and large batches of parallel simulations, speeding up design changes.
You are packing a suitcase for a trip where items might shift during travel. If heavy things slide to one side, the suitcase becomes unbalanced and hard to carry. In this paper, the simulation framework models how a lunar lander's components—like fuel and sensors—interact during descent, ensuring the algorithms keep everything stable for a safe touchdown.
This framework lets engineers test lunar landing algorithms much faster, which means safer and more reliable missions. It helps space agencies like ESA design landers more efficiently, reducing time and cost in development.
The abstract does not detail specific limitations of Julia or the framework, but it notes that the work evaluates advantages and limitations compared to MATLAB/Simulink. The framework is intended for early-phase design and large-scale analysis, not yet flight-tested in real missions.
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Can Julia land on the Moon? On the development of a GNC simulation framework for the Argonaut lunar lander — Francesco Capolupo, Frederik Markus
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.