In one of the most challenging technical build ups ever, Vodafone is planning to create the first 4G network on the Moon. In a bid to support a mission by German company, PTScientists in 2019, the telecom giant has selected Nokia as its technology partner. Berlin-based PTScientists is working with Vodafone Germany and Audi to achieve the first privately-funded Moon landing which 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 4G 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. 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 its researchers have been awarded over past decades.
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 traditional analog radios and will be crucial to this mission to the Moon and is the first step to building communications infrastructure for future missions.
