In September 2025, the Artemis II Mission will take off, which will take the first woman to the Moon. By that date it will be imperative to have the energy supply of the ships resolved, to enable an operations center on site and set up a network similar to WiFi to link to the ground base.
The most advanced project involves NASA, funding Intuitive Machines. There are also the new Starlink satellites and the big surprise is Aquarian Space, a space startup that plans to extend the broadband to the entire Solar System.
And although the most pressing thing is to establish a communication protocol adapting cell phone technologies, the transmission of high-quality images is also among the priorities.
In times of social media, hazy photos and videos are not a valid option for this new spatial approach. Although the jump to color does not seem like a technical feat, it requires great investment to make it.
“No one is going to accept the video resolution of the Apollo era. The minimum for the moon landing is 4K. Up to 500 megabits of data will be received, so the images will be ten times larger,” says Matt Cosby of the British station Goonhilly Earth Station.
However, as anticipated by Raymond Wagner of the 3GPP Lunar project, “wireless systems still have a series of technical challenges to operate on our only satellite.”
Extreme temperatures and radiation environment can seriously damage the commercial electronics. 4G and 5G systems are computationally complex and adapting them to a space environment is more complex than originally imagined.
A space odyssey
The inaugural kickoff was the IM-1 mission, where Intuitive Machines, which operates under the supervision of NASA – a month ago – became the first private company to land a multi-function module called Odysseus on the Moon.
“We have developed a complete lunar program that includes mission control, the Nova-C lander, a communications network and a series of launch vehicle contracts with SpaceX,” they noted.
As Odysseus progresses through granular sediment, aerospace engineers are accelerating efforts to investigate radio frequency propagation. The tests will determine the appropriate areas for install the antennas.
For wireless integration with our planet, the company selected by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) was Nokia Bell Labs.
In addition to his experience in designing future network architectures, what was taken into account was his extensive history in space innovation, dating back to the Mercury Program, the United States’ first manned space project, developed between 1961 and 1963. .
This network will transmit video and telemetry data from cameras and sensors spread across the Moon and integrated into spacesuits, vehicles, structures and scientific experiments and will provide the connectivity necessary to control robots and automate dangerous tasks.
“Pushing the boundaries of technology is in our DNA. By creating a communication solutions plan, you will help establish the foundation for a permanent human presence on the lunar surface,” said Thierry E. Klein, president of Nokia Bell Labs.
The mystery of the red planet
When the first colonists set foot on the Red Planet, perhaps within two decades, they will need to have a solid communication link between the different platforms and Earth.
Currently, NASA uses the Mars Relay Network to receive scientific information sent by the Martian rovers: Opportunity, Curiosity and Perseverance.
This network is made up of 5 orbiters (MRO, TGO, MAVEN, Mars Odyssey and Mars Express) and transmit the data through interplanetary space to the antennas of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN).
The problem is that these orbiters are not geostationary, which means that the time the rover has to pair up is quite limited. So the sending of photos and videos is slow and gradual.
Some firms are testing alternatives. In this consideration, terrestrial Wi-Fi was outright ruled out. Due to the distance, a message moving at the speed of light would take, one way, about 24 minutes.
Lasers could carry much more data than the radio waves that have been used since the early days of space travel, but there is nothing worth evaluating yet.
At the moment, the best positioned resource is Starlink, a constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit operated by SpaceX. On Mars, such a system could be cheaper and easier to build.
The key could be in Elon Musk’s Direct to Cell technology, which gives him access to the satellite network to any cell phone, to send and receive voice, text and data messages anywhere on the planet.
One of the great advantages is that a phone with differential characteristics is not required to receive the data. The idea is that it can be used with any LTE device.
Musk indicated that his new satellites, known as V2, are built to take advantage of the Starship’s 9-meter diameter, which doubles the capacity of the Falcon 9.
In fact, SpaceX president and chief operating officer Gwynne Shotwell noted that the arrival of “Starlink around Mars” is getting closer and closer.
“Once we get people to Mars, they will need the ability to communicate. In fact, I think it will be even more critical to have a constellation like Starlink around the planet,” she maintained.
Interplanetary broadband
Aquarian Space revealed that its Internet for the Solar System (Solnet) project, in the initial phase, obtained $650,000 in funding to work on research and technical studies to connect, in principle, the Moon and Mars to terrestrial broadband.
The plan is that both astronauts and galactic tourists have access to a network with speeds of up to 100 megabits per second.
The intention is to dock a fleet of third-party satellites – we are talking about Starlink – at the end of 2024. This squadron will be followed by a second batch in 2025 to cover the South Pole of the Moon.
Once these objectives have been achieved, Solnet technology will be implemented at every point in the Solar System, a system that will operate like an interstellar modem.
On their official website they explain their intention to create “a space-based relay network that allows large volumes of data to be sent and received uninterrupted, quickly and reliably, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.”