On Earth as on the Moon: Nokia and Axiom bring 4G signal to the lunar surface

To make the Artemis mission (which will take astronauts to the Moon in 2025) cheaper than Apollo, NASA’s plan is to use technologies that are already available – or nearly so. That’s why the space agency decided to hire Nokia to connect the astronauts who will be part of the mission.

Axiom, the company contracted by NASA to manufacture spacesuits, said it will use Nokia technology as the main communication system for the AxEMU suits.

Created in partnership with the Prada brand, the idea is that the suits will have more flexibility, greater protection to withstand the harsh space environment and specialized tools for space exploration.

Among these tools is the system that astronauts will use to communicate with each other during their stay on the Moon. The transmission of the signal from the Moon to Earth will be done by another company.

To fund the upgrade of the communications system, NASA added $57.5 million to the order from Axiom, bringing the total value to $285.5 million. Thierry Klein, president of Nokia Bell Labs, says his network will be the first deployment of 4G/LTE technology in space.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION

When NASA first started working on the spacesuits, the plan was to rely on radio and Wi-Fi for communications. But when the agency outsourced that work to private companies, it awarded a research contract to Nokia to develop a “3G PP” (a set of technical specifications for terrestrial mobile networks) for the Moon.

This is because while radio has limited bandwidth and Wi-Fi has limited range, a 4G/LTE network can provide high bandwidth to multiple devices.

Nokia has designed an “embedded network” that will be tested on the Intuitive Machine’s upcoming uncrewed lunar mission. The technology will be used to communicate with the Lunar Outpost rover and the rover’s hopper.

This demonstration will serve as the basis for the final network design that will go into space on Artemis III, Klein said. There are currently no plans for further testing in space, due to tight deadlines.

The AxEMU suits will include built-in mobile devices that astronauts will control through a box on the front of the suit. One challenge for Axiom is ensuring that voices — which sound different in the pressurized atmosphere of the spacesuit — are picked up correctly by the microphones in the helmet, said Russell Ralston, Axiom’s chief suit officer.

On Nokia’s side, the company needs to make its components more resistant to radiation and the temperature of the space environment, as well as ensuring that network management is autonomous and self-configuring.

“This is looking at a future Artemis architecture where this kind of technology can be applied to a lot of things — rovers, pressurized rovers, suits, ground stations,” Ralston says. “The intention is for this to become the foundation of a larger communications network architecture on the surface of the Moon.”