Nokia is about to bring 4G network to the Moon

NASA and Nokia have cooperated to establish a 4G mobile network on the Moon and will deploy it in the near future on a SpaceX rocket that will launch this year, the exact date has not yet been determined. This lander will install the system at the Moon's south pole and will then be controlled remotely from Earth.

Mr. Walt Engelund at NASA said that this process has many challenges because it will have to operate in the lunar environment with harsh temperatures and radiation.

"The first challenge to getting the network up and running is to have mobile devices that are space-qualified, meet the appropriate size, weight and power requirements, and are deployed without technician," he said.

4G network equipment is being built by Nokia's Bell Laboratories. The device will be loaded onto a lander manufactured by the American company Intuitive Machines. Once deployed, it will connect the lander via radio to two roaming vehicles and perform a special mission of ice search.

A vehicle called the Micro-Nova funnel will plunge into a crater to scan for unprecedented close-up evidence of ice on the Moon. The world's first ice images were transmitted back to the lander and then sent back to Earth in near real time via cellular networks. Moon ice could be used to produce oxygen and even fuel that could later be used to launch Mars missions from the Moon.

For NASA's Artemis program, which aims to return astronauts to the Moon within this decade, cellular connectivity is vitally important.

Currently, astronauts talk to each other by radio, Engelund said, but NASA wants a communications system on the Moon capable of supporting scientific data and high-resolution video, especially as Artemis missions become more complex.

"This effort will help establish a communications network on the Moon that can provide our explorers with the ability to transmit scientific data, confer with mission control, and talk to family members." family, as if walking down the street and using a cell phone".

This effort could lay the foundations for an extraterrestrial Internet. Personal devices can connect to the network, allowing people in space using smartphones to access all the applications and services available as if they were on Earth.

Bell Laboratories received a $14.1 million grant in 2020. And in January 2024, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) selected Nokia to begin developing the facility. communications services infrastructure, which will serve as the "framework for the lunar economy".

If a mobile network can endure the journey into orbit, then deploy and survive autonomously in the vacuum of space, withstanding fluctuating temperatures and cosmic radiation, then that network will be able to survive in the harshest locations on Earth, such as polar ice caps, deserts or offshore.

Micah Soto

Update 25 April 2024