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Texting on the Moon or live streaming on Mars may be closer than you think. That’s because NASA and the cellphone manufacturer Nokia are working together to set up a 4G cellular network on the Moon.
The partnership is helping to provide what could be the first steps for peoples long-term presence on other planets, reported CNN. While this seems like something out of science fiction, the reality is that a SpaceX rocket that will launch later in 2024 and it will carry a 4G network to the surface of the Moon. The lander, made by the US company Intuitive Machines, will install this system on the Moon’s south pole and it will be remotely operated from the Earth.
Specially designed for harsh lunar conditions
The 4G network which is being built by Nokia’s Bell Labs and is essentially a network in a box, has to be strong enough to operate in the harsh conditions of the lunar environment.
“The first challenge to getting a network up and running is having space-qualified cellular equipment that meets the appropriate size, weight, and power requirements, as well as being deployed without a technician,” Walt Engelund, deputy associate administrator for programs at NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, told CNN.
It is critical to be able to communicate via cellular connectivity for NASA’s Artemis program which hopes to return astronauts to the Moon this decade. Astronauts currently communicate with each other by radios but a more sophisticated system is needed.
“Being able to communicate on the Moon is critical to Artemis — as critical as any other mission element like power, water to drink, and air to breathe,” said Engelund. “Eventually, this effort will help establish a lunar communications network that could give our explorers the ability to beam scientific data back, confer with mission control, and talk to their families, as if they were walking down the street on their cellphones.”
Not reinventing the wheel
NASA decided that instead of reinventing the wheel, it would use state-of-the art technology companies that were already experts, according to Space.com. So, in 2020, NASA awarded contracts to 14 companies to develop the technology needed for the Artemis program. Nokia was chosen to build the first lunar cellular network.
Rather than developing all new technology, Nokia is adapting its existing hardware for the harsh conditions on the Moon.
If everything goes as planned, Nokia's 4G/LTE lunar network will do more than just allow astronauts to communicate with each other, it will also allow autonomous robotics on the moon to operate. The hope is that the network could be adapted for Mars and that it can be upgraded to 5G.
“Just think about the scale of operations on the moon over the next 20 years. There will be multiple missions in a single year run by different space agencies and even commercial ventures. There will be bases in different regions of the moon,” Thierry Klein, president of Bell Labs Solutions Research at Nokia told Space.com.
“Having every single mission set up their own communications systems would make no sense economically. Instead, they will need to use the same infrastructure in the same locations and interlink all the different bases on the lunar surface. That is the role of a service provider,” he added.
This could be the beginning of an off-world-internet, reported CNN, that is similar to the one on Earth. In the future, space colonists will be able to connect their personal devices to the network and access apps and information anywhere mankind can travel to. It seems that the world of sci-fi is becoming a reality.
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