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The Tech Aboard the International Space Station

Posted by kdawson on from the networking-in-circles dept.

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."

6 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Hmm by Jeek+Elemental · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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!!

    1. Re:Hmm by grub · · Score: 5, Funny


      "NASA, can you beam up Zombieland.2009.R5.ScENeGr0up.avi? That shitty TS is driving us nuts!"

      --
      Trolling is a art,
  2. Pentium 4... by rhsanborn · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

  3. Re:Issues with such networks generalize to Mars by DarkFencer · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    We already have networks with latency comparable to round trip Earth/Mars connections. Its called Time Warner Cable.

  4. Re: "a 10Mbps Internet connection to Earth" by Talisman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Nah, wouldn't be so bad.

    ISS orbits at between 278 km (173 mi) and 460 km (286 mi) from Earth.

    LEO (Low Earth Orbit) satellites orbit at about 400 km, and Geostationary sats orbit at 35,786 km over the equator.

    I'm connected to a GEO sat right now (I'm in the Gulf of Aden atm), and ping time is just under 800ms. Not great, admittedly, but really not bad.

    I imagine NASA keeps their pipe pretty full 24/7 and that might generate some lag, but at their altitude, they are probably getting 300ms ping times or better. It also depends on where your data goes once it hits the Earth station. We had a horrible bottleneck at Eik, Norway so we routed the data through Mirimar, Florida and it lopped off about 600ms from our ping time.

    I'm guessing NASA has a pretty sweet peering arrangement ;)

    --

    "Study your math, kids. Key to the universe." -The Archangel Gabriel
  5. Linux 2.6 in a scientfic system on the ISS by slashbart · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.