SYDNEY, Australia — Solstar Space announced a NASA contract Sept. 29 to develop commercial Wi-Fi access points for the space agency’s Artemis and Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) programs.
Under the $150,000 Small Business Innovation Research award, Solstar will spend six months creating preliminary designs for Wi-Fi access points for human landing systems, lunar rovers, instruments, payloads, sensors, spacesuits and tablet computers.
“Everything needs to be Wi-Fi enabled,” Brian Barnett, Solstar founder and CEO, told SpaceNews. “This is a great opportunity for us to collaborate with NASA Johnson Space Center, the group that pioneered Wi-Fi inside and outside the International Space Station.”
With NASA’s support, Solstar intends to develop commercial products appropriate for CLPS missions, which last one lunar day (about 14 days on Earth).
“Based upon the preliminary designs, we want to build commercial products to fly on a CLPS mission as soon as possible,” Barnett said.
At the same time, Solstar will continue to develop radiation-hardened Wi-Fi access points for longer-duration Artemis missions. Lunar communications systems will have to withstand the moon’s thermal extremes and meet stringent size, weight and power constraints, Barnett said.
NASA technical requirements for Artemis missions call for Wi-Fi-enabled systems and subsystems for the Human Landing System, CLPS payloads, Lunar Terrain Vehicle services, and the Lunar Gateway’s Habitation and Logistics Outpost and airlock module.
“Solstar’s proposed Lunar Wi-Fi Access Point (LWIFI-AP) is designed to meet NASA’s demand for a space-rated, multi-mode, multi-protocol, and multi-band wireless access points capable of operating in extreme lunar conditions,” according to the news release. “This system will enable robust communications between astronauts, robotic systems, lunar vehicles, lunar surface-based and cislunar orbital assets. Solstar’s LWIFI-AP will be engineered to support real-time mission data flow, navigation, and scientific collaboration.”
Santa Fe, New Mexico-based Solstar specializes in persistent communications services for satellites, space stations, launch vehicles and other space systems.
“Receiving this SBIR award is a milestone for Solstar and for space-based connectivity,” Barnett said, adding that Solstar plans to “bring commercial-grade connectivity” to the moon.