Posted on 08/11/2017 9:10:59 AM PDT by BenLurkin
German company Part Time Scientists, which originally competed for the Google Lunar X Prize race to the moon, plans to send a lander with a rover in late 2018 to visit the landing site of Apollo 17. (Launched in 1972, this was NASA's final Apollo mission to the moon.) Instead of using a complex dedicated telecommunication system to relay data from the rover to the Earth, the company will rely on LTE technology — the same system used on Earth for mobile phone communications.
"We are cooperating with Vodafone in order to provide LTE base stations on the moon," Karsten Becker, who heads embedded electronics development and integration for the startup, told Space.com.
"What we are aiming to do is to provide commercial service to bring goods to the moon and also to provide services on the surface of the moon," Becker added.
Part Time Scientists has a launch contract for late 2018 with Space X as a secondary payload on the Falcon 9 rocket. Becker said the company believes it will be the first private entity to reach the surface of the moon, suggesting that none of the Google Lunar X Prize participants are likely to meet the December 2017 deadline for the competition. (Part Time Scientists itself withdrew from the Google Lunar X Prize earlier this year due to the time constraints of the competition.)
The Falcon 9 will carry the team's spacecraft, Alina, to the geostationary transfer orbit, a highly elliptical Earth orbit whose highest point is 26,000 miles (42,000 kilometers). From there, Alina will continue on its own to the moon.
"We will soft-land on the moon and disembark our two rovers, the Audi Lunar Quatro rovers, with which we are going to drive up to Apollo 17," Becker said.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
Hope their accelerator pedals don't get stuck...............
Why bother with the 2 second time lag?
If Gene Hunt is driving, it might as well stay floored.
Can you hear me now?
Cell coverage during a solar eclipse will be epic!
Dial all the planets!!!
My first thought was why would they do the LAST landing site, and then realized that Schmitt and Evans are likelier younger and cheaper to engage for the promotions than Aldrin and the earlier astronauts.
Pretty soon, people won’t know what a ‘payphone’ is.
Phone booths are already extinct...............
Roaming charges apply?
Bigly
I was watching an early Law & Order episode where Cragen stops to use a phone booth.
Funny how time flies.
Wow, an even better way to lose money than flushing it down the toilet! Where do I sign up??
Look at the history of the Chunnel and the original investors.
They were selling old phone booths at the flea market here, recently. No phone, just booth.
Why anyone would buy one I don’t know.............
I’d have one for nostalgia and as a prop.
Ask Superman, he would know...
Never could understand the phone booth thing with Superman.
You can see all inside one................
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