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Startup To Put Cellphone Tower on the Moon (space.com)

Posted by msmash on from the to-the-future dept.

An astronaut wandering the moon next year could use a smartphone to call home. If everything goes according to a plan, that is. A German startup is preparing to set up the first telecommunication infrastructure on the lunar surface. From a report: 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. "What we are aiming to do is to provide commercial service to bring goods to the moon and also to provide services on the surface of the moon," Becker added.

11 of 76 comments (clear)

  1. Last Post by darkain · · Score: 4, Funny

    I'd be first post, but that LTE latency of sending packets back and forth with the moon is just terrible!

  2. Roaming charges by simishag · · Score: 5, Funny

    Those roaming charges will be astronomical.

  3. I know another place to stick one. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Right in Uranus

  4. The moon will have better coverage than here by MikeDataLink · · Score: 2

    Fantastic! The moon will have better coverage than the town where I live! Wait. That sucks.

    --
    Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
  5. Will not be easy ... by eneville · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ... using a smart phone with those gloves on.

    --
    Why UNIX?
    1. Re:Will not be easy ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      u9 9RGWU9ti taz uQ IGW4

      --
      Sent from my MoonPhone. Please excuse any typos.

  6. Startup will put 'X' on moon by onyxruby · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We seem to get a story like this at least every other month. Just to keep some perspective on how ludicrous this is, here's a list of nation states that have landed something on the moon without crashing it:

    US
    China
    USSR

    A few more have deliberately crashed something on the moon:
    India
    Japan
    ESA

    Don't feed the marketing trolls by posting stories like this please. It wastes time and electrons that could be put to far better use....

    1. Re:Startup will put 'X' on moon by geekmux · · Score: 2

      And there isn't a single country on the planet (nor consortium of countries) that could POSSIBLY have "An astronaut wandering the moon next year" -- probably not even in 5 years, even with a MASSIVE multinational effort.

      This mentality simply blows me away. It really does. Imagine if we sat around and talked like this about ANY other technology that's fifty years old. It's like claiming it would take a MASSIVE multi-organizational effort to re-produce a 1969 Plymouth. Or build a black and white television.

      If cost is the argument against re-creating 50-year old missions, the government pisses away funding for half a dozen moon missions every year on stupid shit like marijuana prohibition. Seems it's all about priorities.

  7. Re:Dark Side by thechemic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The spectrum on that side is reserved for Pink Floyd.

    --
    Let's make like a bird... and get the flock outta here.
  8. almost as dumb as fake news by supernova87a · · Score: 2

    That is the stupidest, least coherent article I've read in a long time. Does Space.com even have any editors or is it a direct channel from company press releases to puke onto the internet? (and do the content masters here on /. even read the articles?)

    From what I can gather, the story is that they plan to use a relay box to send data from their rover to Earth (if they ever get there) rather than having a higher powered transmitted on the rover.

    Aside from the "we think LTE means a cellphone on the moon" part, is this at all interesting?

  9. Re: Someone said it above by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 2

    The one way trip is 2.5 seconds. Round trip is about 5-6 seconds.

    Distance to the moon = 384,400 km
    Speed of light = 299,792 km/sec

    Round trip time = (distance * 2) / speed = 2.56 seconds.