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posted by Fnord666 on Friday August 11 2017, @05:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the can-you-hear-me-now? dept.

Can you hear me now?

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.


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  • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:53AM (2 children)

    by jmorris (4844) on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:53AM (#552709)

    Freedompop will give you 1/2GB of data and 200 minutes of talk* for 100% totally free other than a one time charge for their SIM card. So long as you can connect to Sprint's 4G network with hardware you own, from where you are, as fallback to 3G is a chargeable addon feature. They also have offers based on reselling other carriers. Of course that ain't a lot of data and they want to upsell you.

    The connection is data only so voice is delivered via VOIP but not billed to your data usage. Quality will therefore vary.

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  • (Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:50AM (1 child)

    by maxwell demon (1608) on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:50AM (#552761) Journal

    other than a one time charge for their SIM card.

    So not 100% free, but rather prepaid at purchase time.

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
    • (Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday August 12 2017, @06:16AM

      by jmorris (4844) on Saturday August 12 2017, @06:16AM (#552767)

      The SIM is a one time charge and you get 1/2 GB per month as long as you want it. And it ain't expensive if you just buy the SIM and not a whole MiFi or phone from them.