As humans plan to return to and establish a sustainable presence on the Moon by 2028,
communication with each other on the moon and with Earth will be very important.
It is time for the Moon to get online, so NASA and ESA are embarking on ambitious plans to
build internet and GPS systems for the Moon. The establishment of these systems will enable
us to open up the North and South poles as well as the far side of the Moon, for exploration.
These systems will help set the groundwork for human habitation on the moon
and prepare us for connecting to human presence on Mars.
Revolutionary as it is, GPS is, for now, a solution limited to our own planet. Soon however,
as humans return to the moon, a lot of people and hardware will be heading for the Moon,
so navigation and communication solutions are absolutely essential.
In the Apollo era, communication with Earth was only available from the near side of the Moon,
and was primarily used for transmitting telemetry data and low-resolution voice and video.
Current communication with the moon is still on a direct line of sight to the Earth. That presents a
problem if we ever want to explore the far side of the Moon, which never faces the Earth. Even
on the side that faces us, craters and valleys can block direct line of sight to the Earth.
That is why we need to develop a communication infrastructure on the Moon to provide a method
of direct communication between people, equipment, and the Earth that does not require direct line of
sight. ESA s Moonlight and NASA s LunaNet programs will make it easier for lunar devices, rovers,
people, sensors, and exploration projects to communicate with each other and with the Earth.
Envisioned much like the internet on Earth, LunaNet would enable communications not only
among humans and equipment on the moon, but also allow each of them to transmit data back to Earth
through Moon-orbiting relays, such as satellites or a Moon-orbiting space station like Gateway.
The Gateway orbiting space station around the Moon is a multi-nation collaboration.
The plan is to deploy a whole interconnected network of lunar science and exploration
orbiters around the moon, as well as surface mobile and stationary systems. Moon and Earth
orbiters are being planned that will relay GPS service to lunar vehicles travelling
up to Gateway as well as those travelling from Gateway to the surface of the moon.
Once relays are in place, we will have the ability to give network connection to the lunar Poles,
and the lunar far side. GPS-like technologies will be crucial for human
navigation and unmanned systems on the Moon. Just like when mobile networks started on Earth,
you could get phone coverage when you were in the city but out in the country you didn t have
coverage anymore. The need was to have base stations in the outlying areas.
There is an armada of missions going to the Moon this decade. That is why
initially the LunaNet community includes government, commercial and academic entities.
Eventually it will include individuals a well. In October 2020 Nokia was awarded a contract to
deploy a 4G network on the Moon by the end of 2022 and possibly, longer term,
5G would follow which could serve as the stepping stone to the wider LunaNet.
The idea is to put equipment on a lunar lander which will function as the base station housing
the network side of the solution. The lander then deploys a rover. A cellular
link is then established between this little rover and the equipment on the lander. Tests
will explore communication from the rover at 2-3 kilometers away from the lander.
One challenge is to develop the equipment that can withstand the shock,
vibration, and acceleration of the trip to the Moon.
In addition there are the temperature changes, vacuum, and radiation to handle too.
So if you are an astronaut cruising around on the surface of the moon,
you get your network access through the equivalent of your cell phone through the Nokia cell tower.
If you are trying to get data back to Earth or back around to the far side of the Moon,
your data will go from that base station and work itself back to Earth through a relay or
any combination of relays, the same way that the internet traffic on Earth bounces around.
Some lunar communications will likely be carried out with standard TCP/IP communication protocols,
but for the trip to Earth that simply won t suffice. Earth infrastructure is primarily
designed to be static. Data centers, submerged cables, and cell towers all stay put. But LunaNet
has to be designed for space. Satellites can move in and out of view within minutes,
requiring rapid connect and disconnect of links as they go in and out of range.
Then there is potential radio signal interference and other issues that can cause data loss.
That s why LunaNet will rely on the Disruption Tolerant Networking bundle protocol instead,
which is a method of storing data when the relay satellite goes out of
range and then forwarding with automatic retransmission to the next relay satellite
ensuring data makes it to its destination.
With a huge scientific benefit in Moon operations, and with the recent discovery of significant
quantities of water on the Moon, methods of extracting it are already being developed.
If you went to the Moon on vacation 30 years from now,
certainly exchanging emails and posting stuff on the web would be ok. A phone call
would be possible, but it would be difficult and annoying because of the few seconds of delay.
This opens up a new area of investigation into Interplanetary Internet. On Mars for example,
delays are measured in minutes but there would be plenty of buffering time for data.
Farther out in the solar system presents even greater problems.
Even the speed of light becomes slow and time consuming considering the vast distances.
Connecting the far side of the Moon will help us explore space well beyond our solar system
however, because the far side of the Moon is a very quiet place. All of the racket coming
from Earth is blocked by the whole Moon. Buried laser communications systems have been
tested successfully, demonstrating that the ability to send 622 megabits per second from
the Moon by laser works, so communication with the Earth will most likely be via laser transmission.
The spacecraft LADEE with its perfectly functioning laser system
was deliberately crashed into the moon in 2013 to stir up some dust to see what happens.
It is now a buried communication system. Who knows, maybe like in the movie,
a stranded astronaut may dig it up someday and try and get the laser to work again.
LunaNet is expected to include different categories of services:
First, NETWORKING SERVICES like internet on Earth, capable of moving data between nodes.
Second, GPS-like service that could be used for search and rescue, or surface navigation
guiding spacecraft traveling to and from the Gateway moon orbiting spacestation.
Third, SCIENCE SERVICES.
Astronauts on the lunar surface will be able to receive real-time alerts generated
from space weather instruments of incoming solar flares, giving them ample time to seek cover.
LunaNet will be critical for communication during deliveries of science payloads to
the far side and polar regions of the moon, where direct communication with Earth ground
stations will be impossible without a method of relaying that communication to Earth.
Reliable, resilient and high-capacity communication networks will be key to supporting
sustainable human presence on the moon s surface. With the LunaNet architecture in place, robotic
landers, rovers and astronauts on the Moon will have network access similar to networks on Earth.
Rovers analyzing samples can send their data directly to relays orbiting the Moon,
which can then transmit that data back to Earth. The European Space Agency s Moonlight telecoms
and positioning network will involve a plethora of satellites orbiting the moon, playing a key
part in efforts to colonize the Moon and beyond. Soon, from colonies on the moon, we will see HD
video transmission, cell phone communication, GPS navigation, data transmission,
and live video streaming from the moon. 1