Two researchers from Georgia Tech are part of a multi-university team collaborating on a $4.5 million project to better understand cislunar space — the area between Earth and the moon — which is critical for future space exploration. The Characterizing Highways and Automated Navigation in Cislunar Environment (CHANCE) project is funded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and involves scientists from Purdue University, Penn State University, Georgia Tech, and the University of Texas at Austin. With the moon’s gravity being one-sixth of Earth’s gravity, significantly less propulsion is required to navigate within cislunar space and the costs to explore the solar system using the moon as a launching platform are much cheaper. John Christian, associate professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, is a co-principal investigator, and Anton Leykin, professor in the School of Mathematics, is a collaborator.