Houston company sending cell phone service to the moon with IM-2 mission

Next month, Intuitive Machines, Inc., a space exploration company headquartered in Houston, Texas will do something that’s never been done before. 

Houston company sending cell phone service to the moon

What we know:

They’ve constructed a machine named, ‘Athena,’ made to get Nokia’s Lunar Surface Communication System (LSCS)-- 4G/LTE cellular technology working on the moon. 

It’s all part of the IM-2 Athena lunar mission.

Athena will blast off, along with a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, in February. 

Athena will orbit the moon before making the landing and establishing cell service on the Moon. 

Currently, communication in outer space is done through large satellite dishes stationed on planet Earth that send radio signals to and from large radios on the lander on the moon. 

What they're saying:

"We want to demonstrate that the advanced technologies that we use every day in our daily lives, that billions of people use and billions of devices are connected, that those same technologies that we can optimize them, we can adapt them for space applications," stated Thierry Klein, President of Bell Labs at Nokia. 

"When you look at a SpaceX rocket, you see that kind of rounded top end, that’s what they call a fairy, and once they get up above the thickest part of the atmosphere, it separates. And then they’ll let us go," said Tim Crane, Chief Growth and Technology Officer at Intuitive Machines.

"That is how we get most of our pictures back, that is how we get most of our telemetry back but that is not the way you would want to communicate if you were standing on one crater, and I was standing on the edge of another crater on the moon," said Crane. "We wouldn’t want to use a big dish at earth to talk to each other. So what we’re taking is the piece of the communication technology that will allow us to talk to each other once we are on the surface."

"Every piece of infrastructure that we put on the moon weather it is power generation or communication or the ability to survive the cold night, everything we do like that makes the next step easier," stated Crane. "And so, we are building up towards the day where you will have people living on the moon permanently. That will happen in the next 10 years."

What's next:

The IM-2 Athena Lunar mission is scheduled for a four-day launch window that would open no earlier than February 26, 2025. 

The Source: FOX 26 Anchor Caroline Collins spoke with Thierry Klein, President of Bell Labs at Nokia and Tim Crane, Chief Growth and Technology Officer at Intuitive Machines.

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