Moon to get own cellphone network in 2019

NEW DELHI: THE PROJECT WILL ENABLE HIGHDEFINITION VIDEO TO BE STREAMED FROM THE LUNAR LANDSCAPE TO THE EARTH

The moon will get its first 4G mobile network next year, enabling high-definition video to be streamed from the lunar landscape to the earth, part of a project to back the first privately funded moon mission.

Vodafone Germany, network equipment maker Nokia and carmaker Audi are working together to support the mission, 50 years after the first American astronauts walked on the moon.

The companies are working with Berlin-based PTScientists, whose privately funded Mission to the Moon is due to launch in 2019 from Cape Canaveral on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

The 4G network will enable two Audi lunar quattro rovers to communicate and transfer scientific data and HD video while they approach and study NASA’s Apollo 17 lunar roving vehicle that was used by the last astronauts to walk on the moon, Eugene Cernan and Harrison Schmitt, in December 1972.

The rovers cannot send the scientific data, HD video and photos they collect directly to earth because it takes too much power. Instead, they will use the 4G network to stream the data to a base station, which will beam it back to earth.

Vodafone’s network expertise will be used to set up the 4G network, while 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.

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

“This project involves a radically innovative approach to the development of mobile network infrastructure,” Vodafone Germany chief executive Hannes Ametsreiter said.