Solstar Wins NASA Award for Lunar WiFi

NASA has tapped Solstar Space to build a WiFi network on the Moon, to connect wireless hardware that’s expected to be part of the future lunar economy.

The space agency awarded the space communications firm a $150,000 SBIR Phase 1 contract to design a lunar WiFi access point to support CLPS and Artemis missions.

Roughing it: Getting online on the Moon isn’t as easy as bringing your router to the lunar surface, Solstar founder and CEO Brian Barnett told Payload. The tech faces many challenges in deep space, including surviving extreme temperatures, encountering lunar dust that gets into every crevice of electronics, and dealing with high levels of radiation.

If the WiFi faces any issues, there’s no option to just unplug the router to reset it. As a result, Solstar is designing a proprietary operating system to allow for long distance IT fixes. 

“They have to work 238,000 miles away, and within those extreme environments,” Barnett said. “We have to be able to troubleshoot from Earth.”