A German ship’s company that is planning to land on the Moon has announced it will set up what is fundamentally the first lunar prison cell phone towboat to communicate with Earth .
call Part - Time Scientists ( PTScientists ) , the squad hope to place an remote-controlled lander and bird of passage near the landing place site ofApollo 17 in late 2018 . And to abide in touch with Earth , the team will rely on LTE engineering – used for mobile headphone communication on Earth – rather than a more stock datum relay race system .
" We are cooperate with Vodafone in gild to provide 4 G LTE root word post on the moon , " PTScientists engineer Karsten Becker toldSpace.com . The benefits of using LTE are that it apply less vigour than traditional wireless communication . This should have in mind that large amounts of data can more easily be sent without drain the battery on the lander .
Theoretically , an spaceman with a headphone could connect to the web . " That is absolutely the idea ! " Robert Boehme , chief executive officer of PTScientists , told IFLScience . " The whole idea here is to , for the first clock time , establish re - useable in - place base , cutting down the monetary value and complexity for succeeding blank space enterpriser . "
Originally , PT Scientists were one of the rival in the Google Lunar Xprize . This is a competition for private company to land on the Moon , and then go across the aerofoil , with prizes of $ 15 million up for grabs . However , they take out from the competition to go it alone .
To be eligible for the prize , the teams need to launch by December 2017 this year . Thefive finalistshave launch contracts to get to the Moon , but whether they ’ll make this deadline remains to be seen .
PTScientists have a contract bridge to plunge on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in late 2018 . Their lander is call Alina , and will be used as a communication theory stem station on the Moon .
“ Our rovers are packed with detector and equipped with high - definition camera , ” Becker said in astatementback in May . “ We will be collecting a lot of scientific data point on the Moon and the eminent - swiftness data connectivity that LTE gives us will turn on the roamer to communicate with Alina to ship that valuable data back to Earth . ”
In that same statement , CEO of Vodafone Germany , Hannes Ametsreiter , said they want the system to be up and bunk by the time Elon Musk ’s SpaceX sent secret passenger to revolve the Moon .
Musk hadoriginally saidthis would bechance in 2018 , although that looks unlikely give that their Crew Dragon spacecraft wo n’t launch for the first time untilsummer 2018 . But perhaps when cosmonaut do make it there , they will quite literally be able to ring home .
