NASA Tests New Deep Space Cyber-Net

By Walaika Haskins
TechNewsWorld
11/20/08 4:00 AM PT


NASA has announced it has successfully tested the first deep-space communications network.
The new network, modeled on the Internet, was able to transmit scores of space images
between Earth and a NASA science spacecraft located more than 20 million miles away.

Dubbed the "Interplanetary Internet," the software protocol was a joint venture between NASA
and Vint Cerf, a vice president at Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) , that began in 1998.
However, it was a team of engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
in Pasadena, Calif., that used Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) to transmit the images.

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To Infinity and Beyond

Eventually, the Interplanetary Internet will be capable of transmitting voice and video,
but currently the data being sent is telemetry and instrument data -- pictures and readings
of the values of the instruments, he noted.

NASA plans another round of software testing on board the International Space Station
beginning next summer. Within a few years, the Interplanetary Internet could enable
new types of space missions, such as complex ventures involving multiple landed,
mobile and orbiting spacecraft. Those missions will be easier to support as a result
of the use of the Interplanetary Internet.

"Future human missions to the moon and Mars could use this," Wyatt pointed out.

The software could have Earthly applications as well --
"Anywhere on the Earth you have frequent disruptions, you could use this," Wyatt concluded.



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How cool.