Lunar 3GPP Capability Development

Terrestrially, substantial investments have been made in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standards and technology over the past several decades of 3G/4G/5G development and operation. NASA is seeking to leverage this extensive development for the deployment of cost-effective and highly capable networking systems within the lunar communications architecture. However, operating in the lunar environment can be drastically different than operating terrestrially. This subtopic encourages the development that is needed to adapt terrestrial 3GPP technologies into a format suitable for the lunar environment, whether in terms of hardware (e.g. radiation hardening), software (e.g. lunar analysis tools), or modeling (e.g. lunar regolith propagation and scattering). This technology is urgently needed to close gaps in the lunar communications architecture and support the mission objectives of the Artemis program. NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program seeks innovative approaches to leverage terrestrial cellular technologies, standards, and architectures to establish and grow an adaptable and interoperable lunar communications infrastructure capable of supporting a wide range of future lunar mission users through lunar surface assets as well as orbiting relay constellations. The Lunar Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Capability Development subtopic specifically focuses on 3GPP-compatible hardware that can operate in space and on the lunar surface, channel modeling pertinent to operation of 3GPP networks on the lunar surface, advances in 3GPP waveforms beneficial to deployment of lunar networks, and demonstration of capabilities for Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) applicable to use from lunar orbit to lunar surface.