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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @05:31PM (6 children)
I accept your dare.
vodafone free internet tricks [ixquick.eu]
Wow look at all those search results.
Considering that I'm getting free bandwidth from Sprint at this very moment, and I know all the tricks, well ... you just made a very bad bet.
Here's where I give you rope to mock me. Oh well sure it's only 96kbps theoretical maximum and I'm getting like 91kbps right now. Who cares if it's fucking free bandwidth from Sprint when it's slow as shit. I'm such a loser and I should feel bad for being a loser because I'm a loser. Hahaha lol fuck me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @05:51PM (5 children)
If you think it's slow now, just wait until you've got a 0.3s latency minimum for a packet to bounce to the moon and back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @05:57PM
Oh goody 28kbps. I can still browse ASCII porn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @06:00PM (3 children)
More like 2.4 seconds round trip, when the moon is about 1.2 light seconds away from earth at perigee.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @06:10PM
That's what I get for doing sloppy math, thanks for correcting the record.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @07:00PM
Woo-hoo! 600 baud!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Saturday August 12 2017, @10:49AM
Yes, but park a fileserver on the Moon constantly beaming all songs and movies back to the Earth and see how the *AA's like them apples.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @05:59PM (4 children)
> An astronaut wandering the moon next year could use a smartphone to call home
Ok. So the astronaut is walking along merrily. He wants to call mom to tell her about the coolness of it all. He reaches into his pocket and realizes he can't use his touchscreen with spacesuit gloves.
But he is crafty: pressing the smartphone tightly to his helmet he screams at the top of his lungs "MOOTHEERR!!". And behold! The vibrations carry into the phone and are enough to activate voice dial.
A little later, his mother complains about shitty voice quality and his constant coughing. The moon being bad for bis health, he should return ASASP (as soon as son-ly possible, i.e. right-the-fuck now and don't you dare think of not doing it!) to help her with the dripping faucet.
Thank you, LTE. Thank you mobile phone. Good bye moon.
(Score: 0, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @06:08PM
Mama's boy shouldn't have had all that incestuous sex, now mom's craving son's cock real bad and son can't travel anywhere without getting calls about how unsatisfied mom is.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Friday August 11 2017, @06:26PM (2 children)
You are aware that LTE is a data communication standard? So the astronaut will (try to) send Twitter messages instead.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @06:45PM (1 child)
It gets worse. TFA quotes the startup idiot as saying they plan to do video chat from the moon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @08:54PM
Live video chat between earth and moon is certainly practical. It will be noticably laggy which will make talking annoying but nothing that can't be solved by social conventions, similar to what you might see on a live news broadcast with remote interviewees.
The base station on the moon won't using LTE to communicate with the earth, that part is for the handset-base station link. Then there will presumably be some sort of communications relay, probably involving at least one earth-orbiting satellites too so it can work throughout the day.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday August 11 2017, @06:37PM (2 children)
> Instead of using a complex dedicated telecommunication system to relay data from the rover to the Earth
Yeah because LTE is a trivial system which doesn't build on decades on engineering...
And space-hardening all that processing is totally like, say, using bluetooth to connect your Galaxy phone to the rover.
And off-the-shelf LTE base stations will totally operate fine on the moon, all the electronics and the antennas, so we don't need no silly NASA-style wasteful "dedicated telecommunication system".
Excuse me while I go find a barf bag...
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 11 2017, @06:42PM (1 child)
If you read the article, it sounds like they are doing little if any hardening, and they expect the hardware to die very quickly. Then they will do it the correct way in 2020 for the second mission.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @06:48PM
Their plan will never work and Part Time Scientists are full time grifters running an investment scam like all startups.
(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.
(Score: 3, Funny) by krishnoid on Friday August 11 2017, @07:20PM (2 children)
Wouldn't they have to actually land on the moon first? And we all know *that* never happened.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @07:27PM
You actually have a valid point since "Part Time Scientists" haven't done jack shit other than making movie props.
(Score: 1) by nnet on Friday August 11 2017, @09:01PM
no. one does not have to land on it to achieve this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @08:05PM (2 children)
Does anyone else think the Apollo landing sites should be considered historical and left undisturbed?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @08:22PM
Everyone thinks Elon Musk should personally teabag the Apollo landing sites.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Friday August 11 2017, @08:38PM
The only things scheduled to land on the Moon in the near term [wikipedia.org], not counting this project, are the Lunar X Prize missions, China's Chang'e landers, India's Chandrayaan-2, Japan's SLIM, and another private lander from Astrobotic Technology in 2019.
People definitely want the Apollo landing sites to remain undisturbed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Lunar_X_Prize#Objections_to_the_Heritage_Bonus_Prizes [wikipedia.org]
https://www.engadget.com/2012/05/25/x-prize-adopts-nasa-guidelines-protecting-lunar-heritage-sites/ [engadget.com]
https://www.nasa.gov/pdf/617743main_NASA-USG_LUNAR_HISTORIC_SITES_RevA-508.pdf [nasa.gov]
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-20/the-battle-for-the-moon-begins [bloomberg.com]
Such recommendations are not law, but it seems unlikely that anybody is going to disturb the sites. If they did do so, I don't see them being punished in any meaningful way, especially if it is a nation state and not a U.S. corporation.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @08:59PM (5 children)
Try to get free bandwidth on the Earth, I dare you.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday August 11 2017, @09:08PM (1 child)
Da bandwidth anon already covered this, bruh. [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 11 2017, @09:24PM
Yes I did now let me switch LTE providers from Sprint to T-Mobile.
2.5 Mbps of free bandwidth from T-Mobile. Verily I am living the dream.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday August 12 2017, @02:53AM (2 children)
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.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:50AM (1 child)
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
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.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Saturday August 12 2017, @06:33AM
Is there any data on how they arrange the backhaul?
Will they use radiation hardened products or take a chance on a commercial version?
And it I'll guess the LTE will spew enough EMI to make radio astronomy from Moon worse.