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The Tech Aboard the International Space Station
CNETNate writes "With its own file server for uploaded Hollywood blockbusters, a 10Mbps Internet connection to Earth, and around a hundred IBM ThinkPad notebooks, the consumer technology aboard the $150 billion International Space Station is impressive. It's the responsibility of just two guys to maintain the uptime of the Space Station's IT, and they have given CNET an in-depth interview to explain what tech's aboard, how it works, and whether Windows viruses are a threat to the astronauts. In a related feature, the Space Station's internal network (which operates over bandwidth of just 1Mbps) and its connected array of Lenovo notebooks is explained, along with the tech we could see in the future."
In the very long run, after we colonize Mars and possibly the Moon, latency issues will become even more severe. It will be interesting to see whether we will simply give them separate networks or have those networks as part of the internet. If the second occurs, we may need new protocols to deal with the large latency and related issues.
"One of the T61ps is a server, making it a client/server network with a couple of routers and an Ethernet backbone.."
You're telling me that with over a hundred machines up there that they have a single point of failure for their domain architecture? And it's a laptop? Hey NASA, ever hear of high-availability?
Granted they probably don't use that many domain resources, but you'd think if they were going to use any specific kind of tech that they would make sure it was redundant. You'd think with how much they spent for this space-station that they'd make an appropriate IT purchase..
Seems a lot closer now then it did before.
Five words describe me on a normal day. two words describe me the rest of the time. can you guess?
The max ground distance for unamplified WiFi is about 200km. The ISS orbits between 340 and 350km, therefore I say we all point our collective WiFi antennae up and try and see the first person to connect up to their network. Of course, you'd only have about 90 minutes of access as I recall; the ISS orbits too fast for much more access time.
With a LOT of lag.
Free Martian Whores!
"Crew members aboard the ISS can request specific films and TV shows to be uploaded to a central file server, which they can then watch on any of the Station's laptops."
Space pirates!!
> With its own file server for uploaded Hollywood blockbusters...
Is that a mission requirement? If they upload a foreign film or "Ishtar" will the entire file system crash? Will they get in trouble if they watch "Dark Star"?
It's very sad, with the real high tech shit aboard the ISS, that consumer grade electronics are featured as 'the tech of ISS'.
Do they run linux?
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
housing 68 IBM ThinkPad A31 laptops from 2002, each boasting a 1.8GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512MB RAM and a 40GB hard drive.
It turns out these double as the main heat supply for the ISS as well.
There have been several instances when viruses have found their way on to the ISS. How do you try to prevent this?
"Every week we uplink new virus definitions. We uplink and deploy them straight away, so we're running pretty much as up-to-date as we can get. If there ever was a virus, we can pop that computer off the network, isolate it and figure out what the problem is. Even if it needs a complete re-wipe, it's pretty easy to quarantine. But the way our IT is set up, there's a network on board, there's a network on the ground, and they're very isolated from viruses on the Internet."'
So if it is isolated from viruses on the Internet, why do you need Anti Virus software on the network ?
Some theorize it is the cosmic rays. Others point out that most times ISS is the only location for space spammers to target and inevitably one of the astronauts punches the monkey.
68 laptops? That's kind of baffling. I can understand having older equipment, it costs a ton of money just to lift a few pounds into orbit. But why so many? and wouldn't you think NASA would have contracted out for customer laptops that weighed less? You'd think companys would have given them away for free just to boast their equipment was used in space.
copyright violations... What special privilege do they get from the RIAA etc. I want it too!
Need an ISP in South Africa?
There is no legal way to get the movie off the DVD - they have to be breaking CSS to do it, which as we all know, is against the law. And the Fed Govt would never break their own law. Or does Hollywood provide NASA with special digital editions of the films just for NASA?
Once upon a time, large portions of the internet were "store and forward."
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
"mankind's first permanent space colony"
Someone needs to tell Mark Harris that the ISS is scheduled to be deorbited 1Q 2016 before he moves in to his condo there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station
-- Terry
The ISS is usually only visible for a few minutes, between 5 and 10 if you are lucky. But for anyone interested in trying: http://www.heavens-above.com/ Don't forget to give it your location.
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
Each piece of equipment has to be claimed. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/07/1644216
If all the astronauts say "not my country's server," then it isn't under any jurisdiction. (or protection, which means the MPAA is quite welcome to go shut it down if they can get there).
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
What happens to these laptops when they are decommissioned? They mentioned these thinkpads are from 2002 (which makes them the same vintage as the ones I use for myself at home); will they be sold off when they are replaced? I would love for my next laptop to be one that spent several years in orbit!
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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Hey, I have an idea! Maybe thepiratebay.org could relocate their servers to be colocated on the ISS. I think the upper stratosphere is out of the Swedish court's jurisdiction! ;)
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Can someone define what they mean by "internal network"? Are they still talking laptops?
Maybe I am thinking too low level, but I thought station was on MIL STD 1553.
This article is not about all the tech... just the IT stuff.
Our scientific equipment "Declic" was sent to the ISS last august. It runs Linux and uC-OS II on a whole pile of microprocessors. The Linux of the part of the system that we built was completely custom built based on "linux from scratch". For an interesting read: Linux Journal
The 2.6 kernel was state of the art when we built it, but we needed its lower latency features.
Is it just me or did the IT guy from NASA sound like a total technoweenie. I noticed he kept repeating himself using buzzwords...in some sentences he said the exact same thing twice: "There's a server on our network, so it's a Client/Server network" O'RLY? And instead of saying reformat he said reload and rewipe and his "buzzword slang" kept changing...how did such a newb get to work at NASA?
"One thing that really impacts the crew's day-to-day operations is if the file server itself fails. This forces them to reload the hard drive and re-establish all the network drives and all the apps. They actually have to get out the media and load the image to the hard drive. That's a significant hit for the crew because we can't do everything for them from the ground.
Jesus Christ, given the cost per minute keeping those guys up there, I'd think they'd at the very least have redundant servers with redundant media.
"we may need new protocols to deal with the large latency"
As others have noted, research along those lines is already in progress. Here's another reference:
http://www.ohio.edu/research/communications/space_communication.cfm
Tucker and Crawford work at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as PART of a three-shift team that provides IT support -- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
CNETNate might want to update the rather sensational pronouncement of a two person super team.
Either these two guys are working 12-hours a day, or they are doing Patriot missile guidance programming as a side job.
In the very long run, after we colonize Mars and possibly the Moon, latency issues will become even more severe. It will be interesting to see whether we will simply give them separate networks or have those networks as part of the internet. If the second occurs, we may need new protocols to deal with the large latency and related issues.
Er, Wow. You're worried about network latency and we haven't even put the first human-inhabitable structure on our moon yet. Cripes man, perhaps you should step back just a few parsecs and realize we might just need stuff like an oxygen-rich environment first, for when you want to hyperventilate whilst flogging your Captains Log to Martian Porn some 250,000 miles away...
Future, I think not! The spacestation is full of outdated network equipment! The Low Rate Data Link telemetry uses a MILBUS-1553, this is one of the most obscure form of network, and has been abandoned in all other areas. I can not tell you what a pain it is to work with. The MediumRDL uses raw ethernet frames (sort of) - and on top of that, CCSDS frames (mostely), but there is no way of making sure packets actually reach there destination. There is also the WiFi and the HighRDL (mostly video), but I am not to familliar with those. Don't think the space station is on the front in any field - only the tried and tested stuff gets fitted. Oh, and the laptops, they are almost outdated before they get certified for use on the space station - it is a very long process. Try searching for SSP 52050 if you wan't to see for your self.
I know someone else has pointed to this, but I think it bears repeating:
article quote: "If the crew wants specific movies, music or TV shows, we can uplink them to the server and they can then access them from any computer."
If these movies are coming from a DVD format, then DMCA violations are certainly occuring at NASA.
Wow, so airlines have been hesitant about the idea of wifi and cellphones being on for years and they're running several wifi APs on the space station ? I understand why NASA does this but are planes really that sensitive ?
Had a T61 for a couple years it was an awesome notebook until the GPUs BGA packings solder failed. (Thanks Nvidia!!)
Its funny they claim to have had viruses and a few sentances later go on to say that hackers can't gain access to systems on ISS..WTF? Maybe not an interactive shell but give me a break.
Some station control (additude..etc) is also controlled by a thinkpad running x86 solaris. I seriously doubt the IT person interviewed has any knowledge of station critical systems.
They have a few wireles APs and I swear to god they use 10base2.
The T61 does NOT have an ECC memory option. I seem to recall most salient radiation problems were minimized by moving to smaller process (less room for alphas to get stuck and and steal electrons?) and being smarter about packaging material which do not lead to nasty secondary reactions but still you'd think ECC memory on a fricking space station would be an absolute minimum requirement in terms of radiation.
Like battlestar galactica, they need the computers onboard to do their work, but they don't need clustered networked environment.
They don't need super hardcore stuff up there, yet! So just keep it simple, stupid (KISS)....makes everything easier on everyone.
Now, they need a more home based system up there and not a corporate scuzi drive raid set up, follow?
They need to back up their medias, but they dont need raid, they need 100% access, but they dont need networked.
They need to have access to their info and sometimes things fail, like the server, what do they need a server for, even if they have 2
or 3 networked computer, you can share stuff through the network without a server....???
I really do not understand why they make things so complicated, when I have 100% run time at home, with no down time, and don't run servers....so I am sure the real hardcore engineers, that thought this thing up, should be able to do so as well, no?
BOFH, meet the new guy, the Bastard Operator From Space.
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Are life support and other critical things also controlled by windows computers?
ROFLMAO!
- one of the 40+ guys they didn't talk to