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Space Station Astronauts Gain Internet Access
cyclone96 writes "Internet access on the International Space Station went live this morning. The crew now has full browsing capability via a special LAN and the Ku-band data link on the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite network, as described in the NASA press release. Flight Engineer T. J. Creamer used the access to post the first tweet from orbit about 7 hours ago. Previous astronaut tweets had been posted by a third party on the ground via email."
...now they are gonna be so busy lolcatting and 4channing it up that nothing is gonna get done.
GG.
Living With a Nerd
Out of curiosity, is there an ISO country code for low Earth orbit?
where no botnet/porn/rickrolling has gone before.
Remember the last time(s) the Space Station's laptops got infected?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Dear sirs:
I am the son of the Eternal Living God of Mars, who was recently assinated by opposition forces. I cincerely need you help to transfer 5,000,000 Gomlets (Five million gromlets) from my planet to yours...
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
But the internet is provided through a contract with Verizon Wireless, the $49.99Million/mo 'Unlimited' plan includes 100Mb of data 25k/25k transfer speeds and 1 email account.
Still no aliens. Keeping vigilant.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
When I posted, "a/s/l check?" to 'Fun Single's this morning I got: "45/m/Rp = 6714 km, i = 51.6419 degrees. Please chat with me, it's really lonely up here," as a response.
Motorcycles, Robots, Space Gossip and More!
So they finally get Internet access, and one of the first things they use it for is a tweet on Twitter? Talk about useless.
Houston, please repeat. Right. Yes, the new solar panel has been successfully installed. ISS out.
Today:
hstn, lol wut?1? ya we pwnd sol pan1 suxrz1!!
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
I know you're joking and yes I found it funny. You gave me a chuckle. I just wanted to point out that they only use RDP when the link is being used for voice/video/data communication between the ISS and the ground. The rest of the time they can use it like any other LAN based Internet, meaning they can use their personal laptops without resorting to RDP.
Maybe the ISS has already been slashdotted... watch out below!
In a week it's going to look like a snow globe in there!
I guess the vacuum of space was too much of a challenge to overcome with RFC1149 IP datagrams.
The latency probably isn't as bad as one would expect. Sure, it seems far, but it's a straight shot. Also, a link between US and Europe would be significantly farther.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
The space station is at most 460km above the Earth. Not counting bouncing around support satellites, the lag is only going to be a millisecond or two. People have this misconception that the ISS is far from the Earth, while in reality it's not that high up.
Even if they have to bounce through a satellite in GEO (which is some 100 times farther away than the ISS and the farthest you're going to get for comms), that's, say, 300ms Earth-GEO-ISS, so the total ping time would be 600ms. No good for Counter-Strike, but still quite tolerable.
I can't believe with all that time they've got up there, they wasted their first tweet not writing
That's one small tweet for man. One giant tweet for mankind.
Thank you for your online order; Online Pizza Delivery status: "6-12 months, Pending Space Shuttle availability; NEW click here for 2 day super saver shipping"