April 30, 2026 -
The world watched with wide-eyed wonder as Artemis II looped around the Moon, traveling 252,756 miles from Earth — the farthest humans have ever traveled in space — in a 10-day voyage. But behind the scenes, an equally compelling technological story was unfolding that few talked about.
Under the hood, missions like Artemis II are heavily supported by digital twins that help astronauts recreate space conditions and test gears in safe lab environments ahead of the missions. Synopsys, a test and measurement company known for silicon design, IP, and simulation solutions, is collaborating with NASA on future Artemis missions.
Synopsys is working with the NASA Glenn Research Center at Cleveland and Cesium, provider of a digital twin geospatial platform owned by software company Bentley Systems, to help analyze the performance of antennas embedded in space suites and rovers in lunar missions. The work is part of a bigger project called the Lunar 3rd Generation Partnership Project (Lunar 3GPP) that aims to deploy a lunar cellular network to support future Artemis missions.