Nokia & Vodafone Will Set Up 4G On Moon For NASA Rovers To Show Us Cool Video From Its Surface

The German space company PTScientists has been planning a lunar mission for years now, having partnered with Audi to send two quattro rovers to the landing site of the Apollo 17 in 2019.

Now, the team has joined with Vodafone and Nokia to bring 4G LTE communications to the surface of the moon. The setup will allow PTScientists to bring high-definition video of the lunar surface, captured from the rovers, to be transmitted back to Earth.

Vodafone’s base station will communicate with the rovers as they gather footage, using the 1800 MHz frequency band to send it back to the Autonomous Landing and Navigation Module (ALINA). This will in turn transfer all photos and videos back to PTScientists in Berlin. Nokia, meanwhile is building the space-compatible network infrastructure, to a max weight of one kilogram.

4G is more energy efficient than traditional analog radio comms, and will also allow the team to transmit a larger amount of data between the rovers and ALINA. “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,” said Nokia's Marcus Weldon.

“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.”