News World Five innovative ways for Interplanetary Communication

Five innovative ways for Interplanetary Communication

Imagine that you're an astronaut who's been sent to establish a colony on Mars, where you spot something really incredible, and want to show it to your partners on earth. You might be able to

1. An Internet That Works in Space


 
some scientists are working to develop a modified version of the Internet, which uses a new sort of protocol called disruption-tolerant networking (DTN).



Unlike the protocol used on Earth, DTN doesn't assume a continuous end-to-end connection will exist, and it hangs onto data packets that it can't immediately send, until the connection is re-established.

To explain how that works, NASA uses a basketball analogy, in which a player just holds onto the ball patiently until another player is open under the basket, rather than panicking and tossing up a wild shot or throwing the ball away.

In 2008, NASA ran its first test of DTN, using it to transmit dozens of images from a spacecraft located about 20 million miles  from Earth .

Latest World News