General News / October 20, 2020

Nokia and NASA are building internet on the moon

Image via NASA
General News / October 20, 2020

Nokia and NASA are building internet on the moon

Words: Dylan Murphy
Photo: NASA

At least we’ll still be able to tweet about the world’s inevitable implosion.

It has been revealed that Nasa has selected Nokia alongside 13 other agencies to build the first mobile network on the moon.

It comes after last week’s announcement from NASA that they had selected 14 agencies to work on technology for sustainable moon missions by the end of the decade. They have allocated a whopping $370 million to the various companies with around $14.1 million going to Nokia. 

The network will make data transmission in space a reality, allowing astronauts to communicate via voice and video whilst also enabling high definition streaming. According to Nokia they will also make it possible to remotely navigate lunar robots and exchange biometric data through wireless communications.

“Leveraging our rich and successful history in space technologies, from pioneering satellite communication to discovering the cosmic microwave background radiation produced by the Big Bang, we are now building the first ever cellular communications network on the Moon”, Marcus Weldon, Chief Technology Officer at Nokia, said in a statement.

“Reliable, resilient and high-capacity communications networks will be key to supporting sustainable human presence on the lunar surface.”

It’s part of a larger plan from NASA costing $28 billion to send the first woman to the moon alongside the next man – it’ll be the first time humans have landed on the moon since 1972.