NASA's Next Mars Mission Will Join the Interplanetary Internet

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."

Comments

NASA's interplanetary internet just formed

[Spy Handler]

and NSA is already snooping

signals by laser from Alpha Centauri

[bob_super]

Latency of 9 years for a round-trip, and there I thought that calling the helpdesk was slow...

Re:signals by laser from Alpha Centauri

[ubrgeek]

And that's without Verizon capping the monthly bandwidth for NASA's Unlimited Internet plan.

Re:signals by laser from Alpha Centauri

[hraponssi]

What did you expect. It's Maven crawling along like an Ant. Just infinitely more complex and bloated.

Re:signals by laser from Alpha Centauri

[anyanka]

True – but seriously, if we could get a continuous stream of images and other data back, the four year delay wouldn't matter that much. Of course, the probe would have to be fully autonomous, not need any patching and be prepared to expect the unexpected.

Re:signals by laser from Alpha Centauri

[gravis777]

You think the latency is bad, this will be the slowest deployment roleout in history

Re:signals by laser from Alpha Centauri

[edcalaban]

Think about it this way: you can retire when you close your first ticket!

Network structure

[Anonymous Coward]

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?

Re:Network structure

[unixisc]

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.

Re:Network structure

[deains]

Perhaps we should start by assigning an IP address to every star in the galaxy, and see how many are left over. Or we could try area codes.

Re:Network structure

[Anonymous Coward]

Even if it is IP, it will not be TCP. The IETF has fought against bandwidth resistant protocols for at least as long as I've followed them since going to quarterly meetings from 1988 until 1990. They want to push faster bandwidth and lower latency, which is a good thing, but they just don't get reality. Currently, I manage a network for a company that owns several chains of restaurants. For example, in Seattle we have 10s of seconds of RTT from our data center to several of our restaurants. We used to have point to point 56k lines, and they had very low latency, but with the mileage fees, they're just too expensive. Now we use CenturlyLink Internet over DSL. Thank you CenturyLink for horrifically slow lines and your huge buffers that make the latency intolerable. Also, most of the packet loss on CenturyLink's DSL lines are not related to congestion, but TCP makes the assumption that all packet loss is congestion-related and incorrectly slows down. TCP just doesn't work very well under those conditions. We get much better throughput with UDP and handling dropped packets in our application code. It's a pain, but it is necessary because the IETF just doesn't damn get it. Not all of us have fast connections. Some of us are stuck with no options other than the local telco that has too much latency and too much non-congestion packetloss to make TCP usable. We need a new protocol now if we want to be able to be able to use the Internet in backwards places like Seattle.

Re:Network structure

[user32.ExitWindowsEx]

I read somewhere that there are less than 2^128 atoms in the universe, so we don't need IPv7 until we have cross-universe networking.

Re:Network structure

[unixisc]

Point is

• - We don't know how many other stars are there, then planets
• - We don't know the populations on these planets that are likely to need this

Therefore, saving just one 128 bit subnet for earth, and making all the rest available for the others would be the right approach. Earth's IPv6 would be unaffected, while outside earth, anybody making their own systems can be co-opted by this superset IP

Re:Network structure

[unixisc]

Yeah, but that's b'cos we know the limits of what's on earth. What we don't know are the limits of what's outside it - see my above response to a different poster. Last thing you want is to get stuck w/ another conversion, so it makes sense to try & get that right. Also, going to an IPv7 would allow earth's IPv6 to continue unaltered, while being co-opted in an IPv7 (similar to earlier attempts to have an IPv4-mapped IPv6)

Re:Network structure

[weilawei]

If you'd read the fine article, you'd notice that they apply a protocol (the Bundle protocol) *over* the existing stack. You may continue to use TCP where appropriate.

Re:What laser?

[unixisc]

First, it needs to be built into Civ or FreeCiv

Imagine

[BringsApples]

An internet for your own use, with no worries about ass-hats fucking with it, or trying to break it. Just think of all of the (non-hardware) obstacles that they don't have to worry about. Surely they have their own fair share of difficulties that we don't have to deal with here on Earth, but they're free to deal with those obstacles in an environment that we all would love.

Re:Queue Hackers taking control of the Mars Rovers

[MRe_nl]

Any Siemens PLC's on board of the Mars Rovers?

Will Mr. Cerf's Profile Pic

[retroworks]

Consume all the bandwidth? My god, the article is scary with his face taking up the 23" LCD screen. Hope that doesn't take off, he invaded my personal space.

I like the meme

[Mister Liberty]

Namely being a laser pointed somewhere not necessarily to shoot and kill. The US and esp. Cerf's boss might learn something from it.

Re:Queue Hackers taking control of the Mars Rovers

[Mister Liberty]

NASA doesn't need hackers. They will do fine by themselves mixing up feet and yards and meters.

Re:Who the fuck is on alpha centauri with a laser?

[weilawei]

I wonder, it's not like you make use of TCP/IP every day, and the guy didn't co-invent it or anything.

Domain Name?

[arthurpaliden]

How do I go about getting a .mars domain name?

Re:Yeah but there is a huge flaw there...

[cusco]

When private industry gets its hands on the raw, hopefully cheaper materials from space mining, the things they will do will be limitless.

Not the way that private industry is run today. Corporations need to get beyond the "maximum short-term ROI" mindset that has ruled it for the past two centuries, and I see no sign of that happening nor any logical path that might lead it to happen. If private industry were interested in the long-term we'd have solar power satellites by now.

D1 still exists.

[Tenebrousedge]

So sign in.

The D1 discussion system still works the same way. You don't have to worry about posting to undo moderation (although forgetting to moderate is more of a risk). On the possibly-negative side, you will tend to use a lot of tabs to see threads below your threshold. I recommend a tree view tab organizer, which has the additional benefit of being a far more sensible way to browse online source code.

It is a few mouse clicks and a registration form away. For interested account holders, from your Account menu, select Discussions, and then 'Classic Discussion System (D1)'. Choosing not to sign in is an option, but I would tend to expect that the interface provided to the unauthenticated masses would be geared towards, well, mass appeal. The interface you're after still exists and is just as useful as it ever was -- I hope signing in isn't too much of a bother. I haven't noticed any UI changes.

Mars colonists

[atomicxblue]

I keep thinking what the reaction will be when the Mars colonists start torrenting.. "Yeah? What you going to do about it? If you can get here, you can arrest me.."