Who Owns the Moon's Cell Towers?
Mar 30, 2025 · 8:11
NASA is building the first-ever GPS network for the Moon because the aging Deep Space Network—14 antennas built in 1960 that can only listen to one spacecraft at a time—can't handle the surge of lunar missions. The episode explains how the Artemis I mission alone consumed 1,774 hours, or 23% of the network's capacity, forcing the James Webb Telescope to wait 70-80 hours between connections instead of its usual 12. With payloads going parabolic and China racing to dominate space, competition for lunar territory—especially the South Pole, where water ice is known to exist—makes a dedicated Moon network an inevitability. Intuitive Machines, the first private company to land on the Moon, won a nearly $5 billion NASA contract to build the five-satellite Cislunar Network, capable of streaming 4K video and delivering GPS-level navigation accuracy.
