Nasa and Nokia want to take internet to the Moon – 03/03/2023 – Tech

A Nokia project, in partnership with NASA, has developed a way to connect the Moon to a 4G network.

The undertaking was presented at the company’s stand at Mobile World Congress, one of the main technology events in the world, focused on telecommunications, which took place this week in Barcelona.

The device developed by the Finnish should be launched into space this year, still without a date, to begin testing the cellular network.

Initially, the equipment will connect astromobiles (explorer vehicles) for a few days. In the future, the idea is that this will serve to connect future exploration bases installed on the Moon.

The equipment must be capable of both creating the network there and connecting again to Earth via satellite.

Wilson Cardoso, Nokia technology director for Latin America and one of the people who helped define the project’s technical specifications, says that the equipment behaved well in a simulated environment. “It’s a different story over there. These are very extreme temperatures that we cannot reproduce here”, he says.

Another challenge is dealing with lunar soil. It does not allow grounding and, therefore, the devices burn. The test will allow to see if the developed alternative survives.

Making this equipment more robust, says Cardoso, could also be useful for developing products that withstand more extreme conditions on Earth.

The choice for 4G, at a time when 5G is already a reality, was due to the duration of the project. Cardoso explains that the endeavor began in 2012, when the fourth generation of mobile internet predominated.

Journalist traveled at the invitation of Huawei