An astronaut wandering the moon next year could use a smartphone to call home. A German startup is preparing to set up the first telecommunication infrastructure on the lunar surface.
The German company Part Time Scientists, which originally competed for the Google Lunar X Prize race to the moon, plans to send a lander with a rover in late 2018 to visit the landing site of Apollo 17. (Launched in 1972, this was NASA's final Apollo mission to the moon.) Instead of using a complex dedicated telecommunication system to relay data from the rover to the Earth, the company will rely on LTE technology — the same system used on Earth for mobile phone communications.
"We are cooperating with Vodafone in order to provide LTE base stations on the moon," Karsten Becker, who heads embedded electronics development and integration for the startup, told Space.com.
Try to get free bandwidth on the Moon, I dare you.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday August 11 2017, @07:01PM (3 children)
If you had a really good antenna, would you be able to connect to it from Earth?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @07:12PM (1 child)
If you had a really strong transmitter, could you stingray the astronauts?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @09:32PM
We might want to figure out the water situation on the moon before we send any stingrays there.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday August 11 2017, @09:42PM
I suspect not - GSM has a limit based on the speed of light, you have to be within x milliseconds of the antenna for it to work - about 25 miles if I remember correctly.