Nokia is Putting the First Cellular Network On the Moon

Feb 18, 2025

Later this month, Intuitive Machines, the private company behind the first commercial lander that touched down on the moon, will launch a second lunar mission from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The plan is to deploy a lander, a rover, and hopper to explore a site near the lunar south pole that could harbor water ice, and to put a communications satellite on lunar orbit.

But the mission will also bring something that’s never been installed on the moon or anywhere else in space before—a fully functional 4G cellular network.

Point-to-point radio communications, which need a clear line of sight between transmitting and receiving antennas, have always been a backbone of both surface communications and the link back to Earth, starting with the Apollo program. Using point-to-point radio in space wasn’t much of an issue in the past because there never have been that many points to connect. Usually, it was just a single spacecraft, a lander, or a rover talking to Earth. And they didn't need to send much data either.

“They were based on [ultra high frequency] or [very high frequency] technologies connecting a small number of devices with relatively low data throughput”, says Thierry Klein, president of Nokia Bell Labs Solutions Research, which was contracted by NASA to design a cellular network for the moon back in 2020.

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https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/02/18/1111984/nokia-is-putting-the-first-cellular-network-on-the-moon/