Delhi-born Nishant Batra is helping NASA set up cellular network on Moon

Categories: SCIENCE NEWS Technology

                     Cellular network and wifi is something we take for granted these days. Entire repository of humankind's knowledge or that one TikTok video is literally at our fingertips. Things have gone ahead so quickly that sometimes it makes us wonder whether there is any new frontier left.Prior to joining the telecommunications major, Batra worked at Veoneer in Sweden, as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer. He had also spent 12 years at Ericsson holding several positions.

                     NASA is looking to regain its presence on the lunar surface with its uncrewed Artemis mission slated for launch in May this year and crewed mission in 2026.In October last year, the US space agency selected Nokia as a partner to advance "Tipping Point" technologies for the Moon, deploying the first LTE/4G communications system in space and helping pave the way towards sustainable human presence on the lunar surface.

                      The network will provide critical communication capabilities for many different data transmission applications, including vital command and control functions, remote control of lunar rovers, real-time navigation and streaming of high definition video - while containing power, size and cost.This is not the first space collaboration for Nokia`s Bell Labs.

                      In 1962, Bell Labs and NASA launched into orbit Telstar 1, the first communications satellite capable of relaying TV signals between Europe and North America.In 1964, Bell Labs researchers and future Nobel laureates, Arno Penzias and Bob Wilson, discovered the cosmic microwave background radiation left over from the Big Bang, confirming the now predominant theory on the origins of the universe.