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The Interplanetary Internet

The University of Colorado at Boulder is working with NASA on the development and refinement of a new communication technology is being tested on the International Space Station. This technology will extend the Internet from Earth into outer space and through the solar system. Called


DTN, the new technology will allow NASA and other space agencies around the world communicate better with the international fleet of spacecraft that will be used to explore the Moon and Mars in the future. Technology is expected to take an "interplanetary Internet", as Kevin Gifford calls it, an expert in the department of aerospace engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Communication between a spacecraft and ground stations has traditionally been done through a link between two points, in a comparable way to communicate by walkie-talkie. Currently, space operations teams on the ground must fix each link manually and generate the appropriate commands to specify where data will be sent and when. As the number of spacecraft and links increases, and emerges the need for communication among many houses, these manual operations become increasingly cumbersome and expensive.

In the future, require highly automated communication skills to adequately address the needs of staff at lunar bases and missions of exploration on the lunar surface and other stars, including the exchange of information between satellites that orbit to act as repeaters, the made habitats beyond Earth and the astronauts themselves during their extravehicular activities, or in other situations.

However, existing Internet protocols, designed for networks where it is relatively easy and common for servers and users' computers are always available an infrastructure that allows your connection, not the most appropriate for many scenarios common space in which it is customary to work with weak and intermittent connections.

New protocols for data communications were installed on the International Space Station in May this year to send DTN. From mid-June, have been conducting related tests by sending such messages.

Although conventional Internet protocols can work well in terrestrial environments have an abundance of physical connections through cables and, except in case of failure, do not experience significant delays in the transmission of signals, the behavior of these protocols in the scenarios typical space environment is clearly inadequate, having to deal with insurmountable delays imposed by the vast distances between planets or orbital locations, and dealing with ultraweak wireless signal as the only infrastructure.

With the new system, unavoidable delays due to location of ships, or the action of solar storms severely interfering with communications, not a technical problem due to critical data packets are not discarded when communication outages. Instead of being discarded, are kept for as long as necessary, until an opportunity arises to transmit.

DTN technology can also be used on Earth. Among the applications that best take advantage of its special features include monitoring of wildlife or livestock in large spaces, enhance Internet connectivity in remote rural areas of third world countries, and provide better communications support for military tactical operations.