Vodafone ties up with Nokia, Audi for 4G network on moon

The moon will get 4G coverage next year, 50 years after the first NASA astronauts walked on its surface. British telecom major Vodafone said in a statement it plans to create the first 4G network on the moon to support a mission by PTScientists in 2019.

The company has appointed Nokia as its technology partner for the network.

Berlin-based company PTScientists is working with Vodafone Germany and Audi to achieve the first privately-funded moon landing. Mission to the Moon is due to launch in 2019 from Cape Canaveral on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

Vodafone's network expertise will be used to set up the moon network, connecting two Audi lunar quattro rovers to a base station in the Autonomous Landing and Navigation Module (ALINA). Nokia, through Nokia Bell Labs, will create a space-grade Ultra Compact Network that will be the lightest ever developed - weighing less than one kilo, the same as a bag of sugar.

''This will be the first privately-funded moon landing mission. It will lay the future of space exploration. The cost is less than what it costs for a full mission lab. We will be below $50-million mark,'' Robert Bohme, founder and chief executive of PTScientists, said.

Nokia Bell Labs has a long and prestigious lineage in influencing the evolution of telecommunications and information technologies, as seen through the eight Nobel Prizes that Bell Labs researchers have been awarded over past decades, Nokia said in a release.

The 4G network will enable the Audi lunar quattro rovers to communicate and transfer scientific data and HD video while they carefully approach and study NASA's Apollo 17 lunar roving vehicle that was used by the last astronauts to walk on the Moon (Commander Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt) to explore the Taurus-Littrow valley in December 1972.

Vodafone testing indicates that the base station should be able to broadcast 4G using the 1800 MHz frequency band and send back the first ever live HD video feed of the Moon's surface, which will be broadcast to a global audience via a deep space link that interconnects with the PTScientists server in the Mission Control Centre in Berlin.

A 4G network is highly energy-efficient compared to analogue radio and that will be crucial to Mission to the Moon and is the first step to building communications infrastructure for future missions.

Nokia chief technology officer and Bell Labs president Marcus Weldon said, "We are very pleased to have been selected by Vodafone to be their technology partner. This important mission is supporting, among other things, the development of new space-grade technologies for future data networking, processing and storage, and will help advance the communications infrastructure required for academics, industry and educational institutions in conducting lunar research.

''These aims have potentially wide-ranging implications for many stakeholders and humanity as a whole, and we look forward to working closely with Vodafone and the other partners in the coming months, prior to the launch in 2019."

Vodafone Germany chief executive Dr Hannes Ametsreiter commented, "This project involves a radically innovative approach to the development of mobile network infrastructure. It is also a great example of an independent, multi-skilled team achieving an objective of immense significance through their courage, pioneering spirit and inventiveness."

Böhme added, "This is a crucial first step for sustainable exploration of the solar system. In order for humanity to leave the cradle of Earth, we need to develop infrastructures beyond our home planet. With Mission to the Moon we will establish and test the first elements of a dedicated communications network on the Moon.

''The great thing about this LTE solution is that it saves so much power, and the less energy we use sending data, the more we have to do science."