Recently, NASA chose Nokia Bell Labs to build a 4G Cellular Network on the Moon. As part of NASA’s Artemis program, NASA to manifest key infrastructure technologies on the lunar surface. Nokia and the other thirteen companies have won a five-year contract to develop certain important technologies to return humans to the moon. This cell tower helps astronauts to use it for voice calls and reliable decent 4G speed data, and also for handling remote operations like controlling lunar operations from a distance.
The main challenge in building a 4G cellular tower on the moon is, to make it on the earth, and ship to the moon which 384,400 kilometres away from the earth. This equipment needs to withstand the vibrations and the forces, stresses and shocks during the launching and landing of the vehicle. These cellular towers need to withstand the harsh temperatures of 250 degrees Celcius for 28 days lunar daylight.
The lack of atmosphere and the absence of typical terrestrial obstructions like trees and buildings will likely mean better signal propagation. These radio frequencies may interfere with the radio telescopes which are used to study the farther space by recording the radio frequency emitted by the objects.
To ship the tower by 2022, Nokia is partnering with Intuitive Machines, who are also developing a lunar ice drill for the moon’s south pole. Intuitive Machines is building a rover that they want to land on the moon in late 2022.
Photo by Ganapathy Kumar on Unsplash
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