Unfortunately for the lander operated by Intuitive Machine as part of the IM-2 mission, Athena landed on its side, posing an insoluble problem for one of the planned experiments. Nokia will not be able to make the first cellular call on the Moon! The position of the device's solar panels drastically reduces its power capacity.
No one on the Moon to take the call
All is not lost, however; in fact, the most important thing has been done. : the equipment manufacturer was able to deploy the Lunar Surface Communications System (LSCS), which transmitted operational data to Earth. During a 25-minute window when the LSCS was able to receive power, the system operated without interruption, demonstrating the potential of cellular technologies for future lunar missions.
A second module, onboard on Intuitive Machines' Micro Nova Hopper, was supposed to connect to the network, but extreme temperatures rendered it inoperable before the Network in a Box (NIB) was activated. Nokia nevertheless considers this demonstration a success: the experiment validated the most important aspects of the network's operation, in particular the transmission of operational data to the Intuitive Machines ground station and Nokia's Mission Control center on Earth, as well as the activation of several components of the communications solution.
Even though the half-baked moon landing Athena's failure prevents the system's subcomponents from being continuously powered, for the Finnish group it is an important step towards the integration of cellular technologies in space exploration. "If our communication modules had been operational at the time our Network in a Box was activated, all indicators show that we could have made the first ever cellular call on the Moon," assures Thierry E. Klein, president of Nokia's Bell Solutions research lab.
"The successes we have achieved are still significant. We have managed to "adapting commercial off-the-shelf components, which connect billions of people on Earth, to make them work in the extreme conditions of the Moon," he continues optimistically.
Nokia announced in early January its intention to launch a 4G network on the Moon to connect the lander and the mission vehicles. It was planned to transmit high-definition video, commands, controls and telemetry data. The astronauts' spacesuits also had to take advantage of it to communicate with the vehicles and the lunar lander.
The partial success of Intuitive Machines contrasts with the success of Blue Ghost, the Firefly Aerospace lander that landed safely on March 2 on the Sea of Crisis.
Source: Nokia
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