"Calling the Moon: Startup to Put Cellphone Tower on the Moon
By Tereza Pultarova, Space.com Contributor | August 10, 2017 03:25pm ET
https://www.space.com/37753-calling-the ... tower.html
Quote:
An astronaut wandering the moon next year could use a smartphone to call home. A German startup is preparing to set up the first telecommunication infrastructure on the lunar surface.
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.
Part Time Scientists has a launch contract for late 2018 with Space X as a secondary payload on the Falcon 9 rocket. Becker said the company believes it will be the first private entity to reach the surface of the moon, suggesting that none of the Google Lunar X Prize participants are likely to meet the December 2017 deadline for the competition. (Part Time Scientists itself withdrew from the Google Lunar X Prize earlier this year due to the time constraints of the competition.)"
Vodafone prepares an LTE moon shot, quite literally
With Part Time Scientists, Vodafone and Audi will take vehicle-to-vehicle communications to new heights.
By Peter Sayer
IDG News Service - Paris bureau chief, IDG News Service | MAR 22, 2017 10:47 AM PT
http://www.pcworld.com/article/3183974/ ... -shot.htmlQuote:
Thanks to Vodafone, the Taurus-Littrow Valley will get its first mobile phone base station next year.
It hasn't needed one up to now, as the last visitors drove through in 1972, the year before the mobile phone was invented.
Next year, though, it will get the very latest in 4G LTE coverage, when it receives a visit from two very special self-driving vehicles.
Taurus-Littrow is the landing site of Apollo 17, where humans last walked on the moon. Next year, an international group based in Berlin plans to send a mission carrying two lunar rovers to explore the site.
The group, Part Time Scientists, has been working on the project for longer than eight years and already has sponsorship and support from auto manufacturer Audi to develop the rovers.
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