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Nokia plans to bring 4G LTE to moon, Maybe this YEAR!

April 4, 2023 News, Nokia, T-Trends 0

Nokia principal engineer Luis Maestro Ruiz De Temino told reporters at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in March that the company intends to start a 4G network on the moon’s surface later this year.

Photo Credits: Nokia

According to CNBC, Nokia’s 4G network will journey to the moon atop a SpaceX rocket and settle in the Shackleton crater on the moon’s southern limb. The antenna-equipped base station with combined EPC capabilities will be located in a Nova-C lunar lander and propelled by a solar-powered rover.

The rover and the base station will interact via LTE, allowing astronauts to both stream real-time footage back to mission management and converse with one another.

The technology used for the project, according to Nokia, has been tailored to manage the environmental stresses of space — particularly, vibration, shock, and acceleration during launch and landing, as well as temperature and radiation while on the moon’s surface. During the design process, the device’s size, weight, and battery consumption were all carefully examined.

While no precise launch date has been set, all of this is paving the way for LTE to be present in orbit. The mission’s goal is for Nokia to learn more about wireless transmission on the moon. On Earth, for example, there are trees, buildings, and other things to consider when considering how our gadgets interact with one another. The moon lacks these features, but it does have mountains and holes that the network must be able to navigate around.