NASA Prepping Phone Network for the Moon

Apparently, it won't be long before "Can you hear me now?" is something said among the craters on the Moon. NASA and the British National Space Center (BNSC) are collaborating on creating the first cellular network in outer space. This will enable robots and astronauts to communicate during the construction of an international moon colony that is slated to be built in 2020.

The network will rely initially on two satellites which will be orbiting the colony and the South Pole of the Moon where the colony will be located.

According to the vision, the network will also enable Moon-to-Earth communication. However, this will not be as simple as cellular calls are now. The network will more than likely resemble satellite networks of the late 1980s and early 1990s.

According to Silicon.com, a prototype mission called MoonLite will launch in 2012 and set up a test network. During this test, instruments underground on the Moon will be in contact with a device in lunar orbit, which will then foreword the data to the Earth.