In a new study published by NASA, experts from the US space agency announce that they have started to study the possibility of installing a wifi network on the Moon.

“This project represents an excellent opportunity to develop solutions to the challenges we will face when we send astronauts to the Moon, with the Artemis mission,” says Mary Lobo, director of the incubation and technological innovation department at Glenn Research. Center, one of NASA's ten space centers.

"At the same time, it can help us overcome the problems of access to the network on Earth, in the most remote regions of the world", continues the specialist.

To assess the possibility of the development of a wifi network on the Moon, the study authors simulated a portion of the lunar surface by comparing it to a small neighborhood in Cleveland.

The researchers showed that installing mini wifi routers on around 20,000 streetlights would allow every household and resident in the area to easily access the network.

A first step

In addition, the scientists calculated that if repeaters could be placed within 70 m of each other, a house of four people could benefit from a connection of approximately 7.5 Mbit / s in download, or 0.875 MB / s. If this speed is not sufficient to watch videos in 4K, it is more than adequate for the majority of uses such as searching for information online or even communication.

For the researchers, this study is a first step: “The results of this study can serve as a basis for planning a lunar wifi network.

Of course, there are other challenges to overcome, in particular the adaptation of the necessary equipment to an extreme environment in terms of dust and temperatures ”.

This is obviously a preliminary work, the wifi project on the Moon is still in a conceptual phase.

NASA hopes, however, that the results of the study can be used in the near future to improve Internet access in less well-served urban communities.

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