An Opinion Piece
I. The Governance Paradox at the Lunar Frontier
The faint crackle of radio static emanating from the lunar surface may carry more significance for international relations than the text of any treaty currently under negotiation. This is not the hum of a radio telescope or the cosmic echo of primordial radiation. Rather, it signals the arrival of something far more mundane—and potentially more transformative—than abstract diplomatic instruments: a commercial 4G/LTE telecommunications network on the Moon. On 10 March 2025, Nokia announced that it had successfully delivered the first cellular network to the lunar surface as part of the Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission to the lunar south pole region. The network, about the size of a small pizza box, powered up for twenty-five minutes, receiving and transmitting operational data to Nokia’s mission control centre nearly 400,000 kilometres away.
This is not merely a technological milestone. It is the opening gambit in a governance paradigm that may prove more consequential than any treaty currently under negotiation.
For over half a century, the international community has operated under the framework of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, whose elegant ambiguities regarding “freedom of exploration” and “non-appropriation” have proven remarkably resilient—precisely because they have never been seriously tested. The discovery of economically viable lunar resources, including water ice, helium-3, and rare earth metals, has now subjected these legal abstractions to unprecedented pressure. The result is a governance vacuum, occupied by competing frameworks: the Artemis Accords, with its fifty-three signatories and its controversial “safety zone” provisions, and the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), championed by China and Russia, which emphasises multilateral coordination under alternative institutional arrangements.
The central difficulty is well documented: the physical extent of any lunar claim remains fundamentally unstandardised. Proposals range from two kilometres to forty kilometres, with no technical consensus to anchor these figures. This is not merely a diplomatic inconvenience; it is a structural flaw in the governance architecture, one that invites conflict precisely where cooperation is most essential.
II. Nokia’s Engineering Reality: What Actually Landed on the Moon
Any serious assessment of lunar governance must begin with the technical facts of what has actually been deployed. The Lunar Surface Communication System (LSCS) developed by Nokia Bell Labs is not a speculative architecture. It is a functioning system that has survived launch, transit through the Van Allen radiation belts, and landing on the lunar surface. Its engineering parameters are precise and well documented.
The Network-in-a-Box Architecture
The LSCS consists of two primary components. The first is a “network-in-a-box” (NIB) that combines the radio, base station, routing, security and core elements of a terrestrial cellular network into a single highly resilient unit. This NIB was installed on one of Athena’s upper carbon-composite panels, with each of fourteen mounting points thermally isolated to keep the network insulated from the extreme cold of deep space. The system was integrated into Athena’s Thermal Protection System, which expels heat when the network is operating and supplies heat to protect it when idle.
The second component consists of device modules installed in two lunar mobility vehicles: Intuitive Machines’ Micro-Nova Hopper and Lunar Outpost’s Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover. Upon landing, these vehicles were designed to deploy on the lunar surface and establish connections to the network on Athena.
What the Network Actually Does
The LSCS uses standard 4G/LTE cellular technology, adapted by Nokia Bell Labs over nearly two decades of research. It is engineered to handle surface connectivity between the lander and vehicles, carrying high-definition video streaming, command-and-control communications, and telemetry data. A powerful direct-to-Earth radio connection from the lander provides a link home, over which mission controllers receive data and images and remotely operate the vehicles over the cellular network. Intuitive Machines expects to relay data from the LSCS back to Earth using its direct-to-Earth data transmission service.
Crucially, the system software is highly integrated and optimised, creating an extremely compact system that is fully autonomous and capable of self-deploying, self-configuring and self-healing. This is not a passive mesh in any meaningful sense. It is an active, centrally orchestrated network with a single base station (the NIB on the lander) and multiple user equipment modules (the rovers and hopper). The network’s autonomy is a matter of software design—self-configuration and self-healing protocols—not a distributed mesh topology.
The Limits of the Current Deployment
The IM-2 mission encountered significant operational challenges. Signal noise with the laser altimeter and issues with optical sensors caused the Athena lander to end up on its side, leaving a planned cellular call—establishing a wireless link between the NIB and the rover and hopper—unworkable. Nevertheless, the engineering team achieved major objectives: the network survived launch, transit, and landing, powered on, sent commands, and received telemetry data back from the network.
The current network’s coverage radius is also strictly bounded. Device modules integrated into Axiom Space’s AxEMU spacesuits will provide mobile voice and broadband connectivity up to two kilometres away from the human landing system. This is not an infrastructure for demarcating claims across vast lunar territories. It is a local-area network for a specific mission.
III. From Current Capability to Future Governance Infrastructure
The gap between Nokia’s current engineering reality and the governance functions earlier theorised is considerable—but not unbridgeable. The question is not whether the current LSCS can demarcate claims, but whether the architectural principles it embodies can be scaled to perform such functions.
Scalability: From Single Cell to Multiple Cells
The current network is a single-cell system. The base station is on the lander; all user equipment connects to it. Future deployments will require multiple cells. As NASA’s technical documentation notes, “LTE capacity can be increased by deploying more RF carriers within each NIB, or by deploying multiple NIBs”. The 3GPP lunar network architecture is designed to “meet the initial operative capability requirements with minimum complexity while the architecture should be expandable and scalable to meet future use cases and requirements”.
A multi-NIB architecture would begin to approximate the distributed infrastructure necessary for demarcation functions. Multiple base stations, each with known coordinates, could provide the positional data necessary for geofencing. But this remains a future capability, not a current one.
Interoperability: The LunaNet Framework
The 3GPP lunar surface networks are being designed to be “interoperable with other networking technologies and be compatible with the LunaNet architecture and blueprints”. LunaNet is NASA’s proposed framework for a lunar communications and navigation infrastructure, intended to provide services analogous to GPS and the internet on Earth. This is the architecture within which demarcation functions could eventually operate.
However, interoperability is not yet operational. The current LSCS is a demonstration system, not a production infrastructure. Its primary purpose is to prove that “cellular technologies can provide the reliable, high-capacity and efficient connectivity needed for future crewed and uncrewed missions to the Moon and eventually Mars”.
The Governance Gap
The distance between a functional 4G/LTE network and a governance infrastructure capable of demarcating claims, enforcing boundaries, and maintaining an immutable audit trail is substantial. The current system is designed for communications—video streaming, command-and-control, telemetry. It is not designed for geofencing, boundary enforcement, or inter-entity coordination.
These functions would require:
- Positional awareness: Each base station and user equipment would need precise knowledge of its location. This requires either navigation satellites (which do not yet exist in a dedicated lunar constellation) or physical navigation beacons (which have not been deployed).
- Shared databases: A mechanism for uploading and distributing boundary coordinates to all network participants.
- Enforcement protocols: Software logic to prevent or log boundary violations.
- Inter-network interoperability: Protocols for exchanging exclusion zone data between the Artemis-aligned network and any ILRS-aligned network.
None of these capabilities are present in the current LSCS. They are aspirational features of future architectures.
IV. The Dual-Network Challenge and the Path to Interoperability
A pragmatic assessment must acknowledge a significant complicating factor. The telecommunications infrastructure on the Moon is unlikely to be unified; rather, it will likely reflect the geopolitical divisions of Earth. Nokia’s lunar 4G network, developed in partnership with NASA, aligns with the Artemis Accords framework. The International Lunar Research Station, championed by China and Russia, will presumably develop its own communications architecture, potentially involving Huawei or other Chinese suppliers.
This bifurcation presents both risks and opportunities. The risk is well understood: the fragmentation of lunar infrastructure along geopolitical lines could exacerbate terrestrial rivalries and complicate coordination. However, the opportunity warrants equal attention. Both networks, irrespective of their originating blocs, operate on fundamentally similar technical principles. Both are being designed with an eye toward the LunaNet architecture. Both require, at minimum, the exchange of basic operational data to prevent collisions and manage shared resources.
The solution lies not in mandating a unified network—a politically impractical objective—but in establishing a minimal interoperability protocol for exclusion zone data exchange. Networks need not merge; they need only exchange coordinates of claims, hazards, and protected areas. This would create a de facto international coordination mechanism without requiring any party to formally cede sovereignty or accept supranational authority. It is governance by technical necessity, not by treaty obligation.
V. Beyond Mining: A Comprehensive Demarcation Framework
The utility of a network-based demarcation system—should one eventually be deployed—extends well beyond commercial mining claims. Once the infrastructure is in place, it could support a comprehensive system of lunar zoning:
Habitat Protection Zones: Human settlements require quiet perimeters to mitigate vibration from rover traffic and mining operations, ensuring structural integrity and crew well-being. These zones could be dynamically adjusted based on activity levels.
Heritage Preservation Sites: The Apollo landing locations and the Soviet Lunokhod rovers are prime candidates for protected status. Network-based geofencing could ensure that no commercial prospector inadvertently disturbs these historically significant sites, providing a level of protection that treaties have thus far failed to establish.
Hazard Exclusion Zones: Areas near nuclear power sources, propellant depots, or geologically unstable formations require dynamically adjustable perimeters responsive to real-time sensor data—a capability uniquely suited to edge-processing networks.
Resource Corridors and Commons: Shared infrastructure—such as routes to water extraction facilities or power transmission lines—could be demarcated as “commons zones” accessible to all signatories, preventing any single actor from monopolising critical resources.
VI. Conclusion: The Primacy of Technical Infrastructure—With Caveats
The argument advanced here is not that technology replaces law, but that it provides the operational substrate upon which legal frameworks can effectively function. The Outer Space Treaty’s principles remain relevant; they require, however, a mechanism for translation from abstract norm to enforceable practice. A future lunar communications network could provide precisely such a mechanism.
But this argument must be advanced with appropriate caution. The current state of lunar communications technology is a single-cell 4G/LTE network, the size of a pizza box, that operated for twenty-five minutes before its lander tipped over. It is a remarkable engineering achievement. It is not a governance infrastructure.
The path from current capability to future governance function is long and uncertain. It requires multiple NIB deployments, navigation capabilities, inter-network interoperability protocols, and—most critically—political will. The towers that may one day demarcate lunar claims do not yet exist in the form required. They are being built, piece by piece, mission by mission, but they are not yet built.
The legal scholar would do well to study the network engineer. But the network engineer would do well to acknowledge the limits of current capability. On the Moon, sovereignty will not be declared in treaties alone—but neither will it be enforced by networks that have not yet been deployed. The future of lunar governance lies somewhere between these two realities, in the uncertain space where law and infrastructure must eventually meet.
This piece reflects the personal opinions of the author and is intended as a scholarly contribution to the discourse on lunar governance and technological futures. It does not represent the views of any affiliated institution.