NASA’s cellular reception is about to be out of this world.
Last week, NASA announced a tranche of grants and awards as part of it’s “Tipping Point” public-private partnership solicitation totaling more than $370 million.
Established in 2014, the Tipping Point program “seeks industry-developed space technologies that can foster the development of commercial space capabilities and benefit future NASA missions,” according to NASA. It looks for technology that will “increase the likelihood of infusion into a commercial space application, and bring the technology to market for both government and commercial applications.”
While big winners such as Lockheed Martin walked away with grants worth nearly $90 million to develop “cryogenic fluid management,” buried under its “Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative” category was a $14.1-million grant to Nokia of America Corporation “to deploy the first LTE/4G communications system in space. The system could support lunar surface communications at greater distances, increased speeds, and provide more reliability than current standards.”
“As part of NASA’s Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative, the agency invests in technologies needed to advance in-situ resource utilization, surface power generation and energy storage, communications, and more,” NASA wrote. “These capabilities will help humans and robots explore more of the Moon.”
Nokia said Monday that its lunar communication network “will be a crucial component for NASA’s Artemis program, which will establish a sustainable presence on the Moon by the end of the decade.”
Artemis is NASA’s latest manned space exploration program. The program’s goals include a manned moon mission by 2024 and, eventually, a mission to Mars.
“We are closer to landing crew on the Moon again than at any other time in our history since the Apollo program. The sooner we go to the Moon, the sooner we send astronauts to Mars,” NASA wrote.
Marcus Weldon, Nokia’s chief technology officer, said, “Reliable, resilient, and high-capacity communications networks will be key to supporting sustainable human presence on the lunar surface. By building the first high-performance wireless network solution on the Moon, Nokia Bell Labs is once again planting the flag for pioneering innovation beyond the conventional limits.”
“As a market leader in end-to-end communication technologies for service provider and enterprise customers globally, Nokia develops and provides mission-critical networks adopted by airports, factories, industrial, first-responders, and the harshest mining operations on Earth, for automation, data collection, and reliable communications,” Weldon added. “By deploying its technologies in the most extreme environments, Nokia Bell Labs will validate the solution’s performance and technology readiness level and further optimize it for future terrestrial and space applications.”
According to Nokia, a 4G/LTE network will be established on the surface of the moon in late 2022.
