Nokia to set up first 4G network on moon with NASA

Nokia’s years-long partnership with NASA is finally taking the mobile giant where no cell phone provider has gone before — the moon. 

There, the Finnish telecommunications company plans to establish the first lunar 4G network, enabling researchers to make new discoveries that could help support the establishment of a human colony on the moon, CNBC reported.

“Future missions that require HD video, robotics, sensing applications, telemetry or biometrics will need the advanced capabilities that cellular networks enable,” Nokia said on its web page about the NASA partnership.

Those technologies will help researchers locate lunar ice, which could help sustain human life on the planet by serving as a source of fuel, water and oxygen for future colonies, according to NASA.  

Nokia plans to launch the network on a SpaceX rocket later this year, according to CNBC.

The company’s network setup features an antenna-equipped base station and a solar-powered rover that will communicate with one another through an LTE connection, CNBC reported.  

This isn’t the first time NASA has partnered with a telecommunications company to support its out-of-this-world objectives. In 2015, the agency partnered with Verizon to create technologies that would “direct and monitor” civilian and commercial drones across the U.S. from Verizon’s expansive phone tower network, the Guardian reported.