Nokia Put a 4G Cellular Network on the Moon, but Couldn't Make a Phone Call

WIRED

07-03-2025

Nokia's Lunar Surface Communications System was supposed to be the first 4G network deployed on the moon and a test for future crewed missions. Things didn't go to plan.
If everything went to plan on March 6, there'd be a small 4G LTE network on a tiny area of the moon right now. The first lunar 4G network—from Nokia—would have provided connectivity for several rovers as a part of the IM-2 mission. The work was supposed to pave the way for NASA's Artemis III in 2027, the first crewed mission to the moon since 1972, where Nokia and Axiom Space will integrate 4G LTE communications capabilities into astronaut spacesuits.
Unfortunately, Intuitive Machine's lander, Athena, landed on her side—a fate that befell the original IM-1—not to mention 250 meters from its intended landing site at the lunar south pole. The orientation of the solar panels, direction of the sun, and cold temperatures in the crater it landed in all contributed to the fact that Athena couldn't recharge. The company announced on March 7 that the mission quickly concluded. (IM-2 wasn't the only craft to land on the moon—earlier this week, Firefly Aerospace's Blue Ghost Mission 1 successfully touched down.)
While Nokia's 4G network couldn't be deployed as planned, the company is still claiming it 'delivered the first cellular network to the moon" since it "validated key aspects of the network's operation.' Inside Athena were several instruments and rovers along with Nokia's Network in a Box (NIB). In an interview at Mobile World Congress 2025, John Dow told WIRED this box is comprised of the radio, base station, routing, and core, all integrated into a compact system. He's the general manager of Nokia Bell Labs' Space Communications Systems.
Nokia says it successfully powered up the NIB, which received commands and transmitted data to Intuitive Machines' ground station on Earth. All system components were fully functional, though it was only online for about 25 minutes until the power went out. The company had planned to make the first cellular call on the moon with the rovers, but the vehicles weren't deployed.
What was supposed to happen? A few hours after landing, and after system checks, Athena's garage door would've opened and its onboard vehicles released. After traversing on the lunar surface, the rovers would have extended their antennas and connected to the network. 'Think of it like a connected vehicle," Dow says. "It has user equipment that we built that will connect with a 4G link to the network in a box on Athena.'
One of these vehicles was the Micro Nova Hopper, nicknamed Grace, from Intuitive Machines—it was designed to hop into a permanently shadowed moon crater to take pictures and readings, looking for potential signs of water ice.
Any data collected would have been transferred back to the NIB on Athena, which would have transferred it to Earth via a long-haul satellite uplink. (That trip to Earth takes about a second and a half.) Dow says the rovers were supposed to travel under 2 kilometers away from Athena (around 1.2 miles), which is how far the broadband connectivity will be supported. If Lunar Outpost mission controllers in Colorado were to send commands to the rovers, the data would have traveled via Intuitive Machine's direct-to-Earth data transmission service to Athena and dispersed through the 4G network.
While the 4G LTE flavor is the same as on Earth, Nokia's Lunar Surface Communications System was optimized for space travel, with several redundancies to recover from potential hardware or electronic failures (lack of power was not one of them). Nokia's components were replaced with lighter materials when possible. For example, the company says it replaced a heavy cavity filter with a ceramic-based solution, reducing its weight by five times. Nokia also says it designed a thermal management solution that handles 'excess heat through conduction and radiation' since it can't use atmosphere-dependent convection used in electronics on Earth.
This 4G NIB had a shorter than planned shelf life, but even if the mission had been successful, the NIB would still be short-lived. Dow says it wasn't meant to survive the harsh lunar night, which starts in about 9 days (a lunar day and a lunar night are each the equivalent of around 14 Earth days). In fact, the entire IM-2 mission was planned to end at this time, as the equipment's solar cells wouldn't have the energy to power the devices. For the Artemis III mission, the network and modules in the spacesuits will be built to survive the extreme temperatures of the moon, which can get as hot as 250 degrees Fahrenheit or as cold as -208 degrees.
Over time, the goal is to establish permanent base stations. 'Once you have robust connectivity, you can see how you can have a basic infrastructure to support all the visions people talk about," Dow says. "As you see the scaling of travel to the lunar surface, then you'll have inhabitants," Dow says. 'Ultimately, it will get to the point where you no longer have to bring the network with you, you just have to bring the device because the network's there.'
The 4G LTE communications that will be integrated into the Axiom spacesuit in the future will be able to communicate from astronaut to lander and astronaut to lander to astronaut. There won't be a smartphone for astronauts to hold up to their head. 'It'll be a little like driving in your car hands-free,' says Russell Ralston, the executive vice president of Extravehicular Activity at Axiom Space. The microphones in the suit will be voice activated, and the network will be able to handle multiple real-time HD video streams, not to mention telemetry and data from the built-in sensors.
So why not 5G? The current generation mobile network provides significant improvements over its predecessor, after all. Dow says development for space takes a long time and that Nokia wanted to start with technology that has been robustly tested. At the time, 5G was still in its early adoption phase and, for the tests, those additional capabilities weren't needed. 'We're absolutely working on the evolution to 5G,' he says. If you're wondering if Nokia will be the only network provider on the moon, Dow says a multi-vendor environment will be flexible largely because Nokia is using a standardized technology with interoperability.
Michael López-Alegría, chief astronaut at Axiom Space, spent time on the International Space Station from 2006 to 2007, and also commanded Axiom-1 in 2022—the first commercially crewed astronaut mission to the ISS. He says on the Apollo missions, the astronauts were heavily trained on geology, and while the Artemis III astronauts are undergoing similar training, having the capability to send high-definition video from the moon to more qualified people back home is changing the game.
'Now they can show a geologist on Earth [the things they're seeing] instead of having them learn everything that a PhD knows,' López-Alegría says. 'They can use it as a tool, a little bit like we do on the ISS today. I think this is a leap, and it's 50 years later, right? So it should be.'
The IM-2 was the only scheduled test of Nokia's 4G network on the moon. It was only partly successful, but Nokia didn't share if there'd be another test now that IM-2 has concluded abruptly. Dow says the company will continue running tests on Earth ahead of Artemis III.
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