The moon is getting 4G before parts of my town

Intuitive Machines' IM-2 Lunar Lander Successfully Commissioned and En Route to the Moon.

(Image credit: Intuitive Machines, LLC)

What I love about the modern world is how it strives for excellence for the most seemingly mundane things. Like laying cables longer than the Earth's circumference to improve internet speeds, or sending a rocket to space to set up 4G on the moon. Yep, that's actually happening, and the 4G-enabled rocket is on its way to the moon right now. Meanwhile, there are still parts of my town that are network black spots, but that's probably not Nokia's fault.

I stumbled across Nokia's mission while reading up about the first datacenter to be sent to the moon, from Lonestar working with SSD company Phison. With Lonestar aiming to offering super-safe backups for corporate data from 384,000 km from Earth, it's on Nokia to get a good 4G signal on the craterous dusty rock.

It's a pretty neat idea, especially as it is mostly the same 4G technology used on Earth, just repurposed and redesigned for life on the lunar surface. Nokia Bell Labs worked to ensure it could carry high-definition video, command-and-control communications, and telemetry data from the rovers to the lander, much like any mobile phone could do, and then retransmit that data from the lander to Earth using Intuitive Machines' own data transmission service.

"We intend to prove that cellular technologies can provide the reliable, high-capacity and efficient connectivity needed for future crewed and uncrewed missions to the Moon and eventually Mars," says Thierry E. Klein, president of Bell Labs Solutions Research at Nokia. "Cellular technology has irrevocably transformed the way we communicate on Earth. There’s no reason it can’t do the same for communications on other worlds."

Watch live: SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launches IM-2 Moon mission from Kennedy Space Center - YouTube

Watch On

Cool, ey?

Now if someone from Nokia wants to 'launch' 4G at the bottom of my road, that'd be grand.

TOPICS

Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog, before graduating into breaking things professionally at PCGamesN. Now he's managing editor of the hardware team at PC Gamer, and you'll usually find him testing the latest components or building a gaming PC.

You must confirm your public display name before commenting

Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.