To the Moon!

When Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon in 1969, mankind realized the unimaginable. Now, almost 40 years later, experts are paving the way for an interplanetary Internet, which will forever change the way we transmit information in space.

Faster Communications

According to NASA scientists, it currently takes about 40 minutes for information to travel from a Mars rover to a NASA scientist — a distance of roughly 100 million to 400 million kilometers depending on earth's rotation. But according to the Manager of Data-Standards Programs at NASA, Adrian Hooke, 40 minutes is too long to wait especially if you are transferring files and only have limited time before communication is interrupted by the earth's rotation.

In extreme and frequently disrupted environments, such as deep space and underwater environments, researchers are finding ways to provide interactive communication between humans and machines through Internet-like services.

A new project called Interplanetary Internet relies on delay-tolerant networking technology. Unlike transmitting data on the Internet, delay-tolerant networking relies on a bundling protocol. The large quantity of data is kept in a single unit and is transmitted at once.

The Need

Why do scientists need to send information across space? If a NASA scientist wants to upgrade software on a weather station on Mars, the data would travel from the scientist's computer to a deep-space antenna complex, then to a relay of satellites in low Mars orbit and finally to the weather station on Mars. Currently, none of the satellites are visible long enough from Earth to transmit the entire upgrade directly from Earth to Mars.

Several different protocol stacks are necessary to transmit the data, which would be plagued by large signal propagation latencies, low-data rates, time disjoint periods of reception/transmission, and intermittent scheduled connectivity. In addition, a planet or other space debris could block the path, creating delays of hours or days.

It's Here

One communication development is a standard called the Coherent File Distribution Protocol (CFDP) developed by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems. CFDP does not have to contend with constant communication or physical transmission. It allows an instrument to record an observation in a file and then transmit it to Earth. As more and more space missions use CFDP, the interplanetary Internet will be built and a new standard for communicating in disconnected environments will be possible.

Maintaining communication across greater distances in space is becoming a reality. A phenomenon that even Neil Armstrong probably didn't fathom when he took his first steps on the moon.

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