Development of the Wi-Fi system to be used on NASA’s Artemis. The Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programs will be handled by Solstar Space. An official announcement of this was made via the firm’s news outlet after receiving the contract award from NASA.
Solstar Space Is Set To Play A Role In Future NASA Lunar Missions
The development of LWIFI-AP is under a NASA Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract valued at $150,000. For this contract, NASA has identified the critical communication infrastructure requirements it expects this Wi-Fi system to meet.
This requirement encompasses the use of Wi-Fi across mission systems and subsystems that are crucial to Artemis. The systems and subsystems are the Human Landing System (HLS), CLPS payloads, Lunar Terrain Vehicle (LTV) services, and the Lunar Gateway’s Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) and airlock module.
Each of these systems and subsystems will carry SWaP-efficient (Size, Weight, and Power) Wi-Fi and 3GPP communications hardware, enabling stable communications with astronauts. Solstar says, “LWIFI-AP will be engineered to support real-time mission data flow, navigation, and scientific collaboration.”
Solstar Space Will Bring Wi-Fi To The Moon
This Wi-Fi hardware “will be engineered for radiation tolerance, thermal survivability and low-SWaP constraints.” With plans for NASA’s Artemis mission taking shape, we can prepare our minds to witness this Wi-Fi system in action on the Moon.