When you’re a Moon colonist it can get a bit lonely. Thankfully come 2012 you will be able to make mobile phone calls using 80’s technology, say what?

NASA and the British National Space Centre (BNSC) have joined forces for a planned mobile phone network on the South Pole of the Moon. The project to be called MoonLite will apparently be launched in 2012 and allow Moon colonists to communicate with each other on networks using similar technology to satellite phone networks used in the 80’s and 90’s.

The technology will mainly be utilized for communication between Astronauts and Robots charting the Moon’s surface and will be fully up and running in 2020. Along with a million Earth to…, Houston and can you hear me now jokes one imagines.