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NASA's Next Mars Mission Will Join the Interplanetary Internet

Posted by Soulskill on from the buffering-buffering-buffering dept.

New submitter radioedit writes "When the MAVEN orbiter arrives at Mars on 22 September 2014, the spacecraft will join up with the other seven nodes of NASA's interplanetary internet, exchanging data with orbiters, rovers on the surface, and us back on Earth using delay-tolerant protocols. It's the latest part of Vint Cerf's mission (video) to create a giant antenna array across the solar system that'll be able to receive signals by laser from Alpha Centauri."

2 of 53 comments (clear)

  1. Network structure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I wonder if they use IPv4 or IPv6.
    And did NASA already pre-allocate subnets and create routing tables for the other planets in advance?

    1. Re:Network structure by unixisc · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I was wondering that as well. Actually, I daresay we might need IPv7, w/ 512 bits of addressing, since we have no idea how many aliens are out there, & how many interplanetary nodes would be needed. Earth would have a /384 subnet, and within that, IPv6 would be contained.