Nokia is one giant step closer to landing the first cellular network on the Moon

We recently celebrated a very special day in the history of space exploration. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the Moon. With more than a billion people watching on television, he climbed down the ladder and proclaimed the famous words: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” We continue to be inspired by this amazing accomplishment as we push for new technological horizons in space exploration.

At Nokia, our purpose is to create technologies that help the world act together, even when that takes us outside of our world. We are honored to take part in advancing the next phase of lunar exploration through NASA's selection and funding of Nokia to provide “Tipping Point” technologies for future missions to the Moon. We relish in the challenge of deploying an LTE/4G network that will operate in one of the harshest environments imaginable - because when we push the boundaries of the technology, the benefits can be broadly leveraged by our customers worldwide.

We have a number of exciting updates to share on our progress. To start with, we are proud to announce that together with our main mission partner Intuitive Machines, we have selected Lunar Outpost and its M1 Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover for integration with our LTE User Equipment (UE). The MAPP rover will drive off the Nova-C lander upon landing on the Moon, and it will communicate with the lander and be remotely controlled using Nokia’s LTE/4G system.

But there is much more. In the short period of time since the start of the project, we have already successfully completed four major milestones, the most recent one being the completion of the Preliminary Design Review with NASA of our latest system and solution designs for the space-hardened LTE base transceiver station (BTS), LTE User Equipment (UE), and the lander and rover antennas. We also provided in-depth reviews of the interface specifications and integration designs of the LTE/4G network system with the Nova-C lander and the MAPP rover. In addition, we have continued to develop specific LTE RF propagation simulations of the lunar surface that provides key inputs to the rover path planning and the mission Concept of Operations.

Part of our Nokia Bell Labs ethos is that we are always testing and anticipating potential issues so that we can address them in the early stages of development. For example, we recently carried out new low-temperature (below -110 °C) testing for some of our prototype antennas to verify that our equipment withstands the challenging environment of the lunar South Pole. We also executed long-duration life tests on prototypes of the LTE BTS and LTE UE to confirm that they are fully functional and operational significantly beyond the expected lander lifetime.

We continue to work very closely with NASA on a number of aspects, including in particular for the selected frequency band of operation for this technology demonstration. We are proactively engaging with the relevant stakeholders in the regulatory spectrum agencies and standardization bodies, as well as the international radio astronomy community, to ensure alignment on the safe operation of the LTE/4G system.

Tremendous progress has been achieved so far; we are on track to achieve the very ambitious timeframe and scope of this groundbreaking mission. However, a lot more work remains in front of us, and we will continue to provide regular updates on our journey to the Moon. Our next key milestones are the Critical Design Review of the end-to-end system designs followed by and the fabrication and testing of our Engineering Development Units. Stay tuned!