Nokia's moonshot misfires

Nokia has been hyping its planned moon network for almost five years now. However, the robot carrying the network to the moon landed wrong and, as a result, Nokia was unable to notch a PR win by placing the first cellular call on the moon. The company said the network ran on the moon for about 25 minutes after Intuitive Machines' robot landed. "Unfortunately, Nokia was unable to make the first cellular call on the moon due to factors beyond our control that resulted in extreme cold temperatures on our user device modules," the company said. "These initial milestones, however, are important steps toward proving that cellular technologies can meet the mission-critical communications needs of future lunar missions and space exploration. We are proud of our partnership with Nasa, Intuitive Machines and Lunar Outpost on this pioneering mission." This is Nokia's second attempt at a moonshot. In 2018, Nokia and partners including Vodafone and lunar rover maker Audi said they would set up an LTE network at the site of the Apollo 17 moon landing. But that effort never got off the ground.