It's a small cell for Nokia, a giant leap for interstellar
communica ons.
Nokia said that it will send up a 4G LTE network in a box to
establish a small cellular bubble on the moon as part of a NASA
project with Intui ve Machines and Lunar Outpost later this year.
"We say the Q4ish me frame," Thierry Klein, president of Bell
Labs solu on research at Nokia Bell Labs, told Fierce Networks at
a Nobel Prize ceremony at the venerable New Jersey ins tu on
Tuesday. "If we don't fly by April, we will fly a er October, based
on the ligh ng condi ons on the moon, so that puts it at the end
of the year," he said.
Launching from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, the Intui ve Machines
lander will separate from the cra and land on the south pole
of the moon. The Nokia equipment is mounted on the 4-meter
tall lander. Once it has touched down, the Nokia equipment will
be switched on, crea ng a 4G "network bubble on the moon,"
Klein said. "This is crea ng communica on on the surface," he
explained, the results of which will be relayed back to Earth via a
satellite connec on.
The dual-redundant "network in a box" will support cell phone-
like terminals carried by a rover developed by Lunar Outpost and
a small "hopper" that can jump into craters and crevices on the
south pole of the moon. The IM-2 lander mission will be searching
for evidence of water on the surface of the moon in this par cular
area, Klein said. "The reason you want to go into a crater on the
south pole is because that is where you expect to find water and
ice," Klein explained.
That is the part of the reason they need to me the launch
right, so that the rover and hopper have maximum lunar
daylight to carry out their mission and record the results. A
en re lunar day can last as long as 29.5 Earth days, although
Klein said that the lunar day me would be equivalent to 13 to
14 Earth days at me of launch.
The IM-2 will be the second of the company's landers on the
moon. The first was landed on February 22, 2024, being the first
commercial lander to ever touch down on the lunar surface.
Naturally, it fell over on its side, although it did s ll manage to
operate on the moon.
"Space is a risky business," Klein admits. "We believe that
even if [the IM-2] ps over, there's a good chance that our
equipment will s ll be working," he said. The Nokia equipment
has already been tested for the harsh condi ons of the lunar
surface in Colorado and Fuerteventura in the Canary Islands.
Previous missions to the moon have used UHF radio and limited
Wi-Fi for communica ons. This will be the first cellular network
on the moon. NASA, he said, chose 4G as a tested cellular
technology to use on the moon.
"If you believe in a lunar [future] with more human presence,
more robo c assets, resource mining and drilling and all of that,
then you definitely need more capacity, that might be the right
me to move over to 5G," Klein said.
"So that's maybe a 2030 meframe, " he said. "My view is that
NASA is going to be one to one-and-half genera ons behind
commercial cellular."
Ar cle Credit: h ps://www.fierce-network.com/wireless/
nokias-4g-moon-plans
Nokia, NASA to take 4G
to the moon
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