First commercial Earth-to-moon communication relay satellite planned for 2023

Communications between Earth and the moon actually requires a huge amount of equipment under current circumstances. The transmission distance for any data sent from our large natural satellite and us here on Earth is 225,000 miles — which means a transmission signal requires significant power, and that translates to heavy, bulky transmission equipment to get the job done. In space, weight and bulk immediately translates to costs that ramp up fast. More

(Source: TechCrunch - Jun 17)