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Interplanetary Network (IPN) Tested 138

Posted by michael from the token-ring dept.
CETS writes "Slim on detail but...USA Today reports of the first test of an Interplanetary Network. 'In a sign of cosmic communications to come, last week mission controllers sent signals to a Mars-orbiting European spacecraft, which relayed the instructions to NASA's Spirit rover on the surface, and a signal was returned to Earth back along the same path.'" NASA also has a press release.
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Interplanetary Network (IPN) Tested More

Interplanetary Network (IPN) Tested

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  • Really bad pun - let's get it out of the way now (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:09AM (#8279011)
    Who's going to be the first to finger Uranus?

    Go ahead - mod this troll... :-)

  • lag (Score:1, Funny)

    by da2 ( 542211 )
    yeah but i wouldnt want to play quake/unreal tournement etc over the link

    • Re:lag (Score:3, Funny)

      by jo_ham ( 604554 )
      Oh, I don't know.

      You could go up against godlike railers without dying - assuming you were on the server end of the link.

      Plus, you could play Quake III on an 8086 system - the connection would just about keep pace with the slideshow frame rate. you'd just have to be patient!

    • Re:lag (Score:2, Funny)

      by FrancisR ( 640455 )
      But at least you'll have an excuse to blame lag everytime you die.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • This <buffering> experiment <buffering> brought <buffering> to <buffering> you <buffering> by <buffering> Real <buffering> Software <buffering> and <buffering> requires <buffering> Real <buffering> One <buffering> Super <buffering> Pass <buffering> .

  • Isn't that a bit early? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by locknloll ( 638243 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:10AM (#8279020) Homepage
    I mean, good intentions, and kudos to NASA to get that infrastructure up and running, but it will probably take some more years before this really starts to make sense.

    I guess it won't be used for routing traffic to gameservers...

    • Not really (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mlyle ( 148697 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:46AM (#8279133)
      The bulk of data coming back from the Mars Exploration Rovers comes back through relay sessions through the Mars Odyssey and the Mars Global Surveyor satellites. The orbiters are simply much closer to the rovers than Earth is, the path loss is less, and so the data rates are much higher... and the satellites have direct visibility of earth for much longer and much higher EIRPs to talk to earth with.

      A couple of weeks ago they tried the first "interplanetary network" where the sessions were up "live", rather than store and forward.

      The really big advantage of this is they'll be able to command the rovers in near-realtime and get answers back right away for much more of the day than direct to earth communications is possible. And with 3 communications satellites above Mars, they are likely to have quite a few communications windows. Expect them to be fairly risk adverse, though, and for it to be several weeks before this is included in their operations.

      • Re:Not really (Score:2, Informative)

        by NSash ( 711724 )
        The really big advantage of this is they'll be able to command the rovers in near-realtime

        ...if you consider 8 minutes of lag to be "near realtime." (Mars is 8 light-minutes away from Earth, so until we develop a Tachyon-based communications system, that's as good as it's going to get.)

        • 8 minutes (Score:3, Insightful)

          by Blondie-Wan ( 559212 )
          Mars is 8 light-minutes away from Earth

          Mars isn't any fixed number of light-minutes from Earth, since their orbits aren't in lockstep. When they're farthest apart, they're, what, about five times as far apart as when they're closest?

          You must be thinking of Earth's distance from the Sun...

      • Re:Not really (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        "The really big advantage of this is they'll be able to command the rovers in near-realtime"

        Because of the lag. By the time you see the canyon ahead, the rover is already lying burning on the canyon bead.

      • Re:Not really (Score:1, Interesting)

        by Anonymous Coward
        The window of opportunity for communication isn't that much better. In fact, it's worse if you use the network. The MGS, Mars Express, etc are in low Mars orbit (LMO?), so they can't see Earth for much longer than the rovers themselves. Maybe an extra 20 minutes when the rovers are just out of sight of Earth (just before Earthrise and after Earthrise).

        And on top of that, the orbiters have to have LOS to the landers. They only have LOS for (wag) about 30 minutes. And that's not taking into account the

    • Re:Isn't that a bit early? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      By dong this they have already been able to increase the bandwidth to the rovers by x5.

      RTFA

    • Re:Isn't that a bit early? (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Well, part of this idea was to place a small number of satellites around planets esp. mars and let them handle communications, CPU processing, GPS, etc. W's group has killed the system that was to be sent to Mars to do this, but the technology is still doable so that NASA can help others and visa-versa. If all the others use it, it will allow for more info to be received from other planets and possibly save a mission or 2.
    • Well, it's not like they're spending a huge chunk of change to make this happen... All of NASA's most recent Mars orbiters have been fitted with short-range antenna pointing toward the surface. Once the spacecraft have completed their primary missions, they're already out at Mars and in good working order. Might as well use them to squeeze out that extra bandwidth and take advantage of the better transmission windows from orbit.

      Smart move on NASA's part.

  • Try to catch me now... (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:12AM (#8279025)
    Hey, what is stopping us from using this as a proxy server? Could you just imagine the guy looking at where the signal is coming from? Hehe...

  • Slashdotting Mars? (Score:5, Funny)

    by Big Nothing ( 229456 ) <tord.stromdal@gmail.com> on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:12AM (#8279029)
    I'm looking forward to the day we can slashdot a website on another planet.

  • With number of planets and stars out there... (Score:5, Funny)

    by SharpFang ( 651121 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:12AM (#8279030) Homepage Journal
    they just MUST use IPv6

  • What about subspace? (Score:5, Funny)

    by zonix ( 592337 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:13AM (#8279031) Journal

    Wouldn't it be much faster to use a subspace frequency?

    z
  • let's see, we already have: PAN: Personal Area Network LAN: Local Area Network SAN: Storage Area Network WLAN: Wireless Local Area Network WAN: Wide Area Network MAN: Metro-something Area Network and now: IPN: Interplanetary Network can anyone add any more?

  • NASA Contumues to ... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Zordas ( 596510 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:24AM (#8279065)
    get people excited about space exploration. I for one am overwellmed by the string of success. Heck .. I even have NASA TV constantly running on my computer just so I don't miss a press release and to lean more about the rovers. Previously we were limited to bot's being in a "Direct line of sight" with Earth to transmit data. Now with the IPN we can get data faster and more often. KUDO's to NASA and the ESA for great job !

  • I'm kind of surprised... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by TWX ( 665546 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:33AM (#8279092)
    ...that they haven't implemented some form of relay satellite over Mars already. I'd think that one satellite in space would remain viable longer than a ground craft, and since it's in space it wouldn't have the dust-on-the-solar-panels problem, the atmospheric barrier problem, or the temperature variance problem. The ground craft wouldn't need to be built to transmit to Earth, just to an orbiting Mars satellite, which would handle the rest, so the landing craft could have engineering to make it more suited to its task rather than concentrate on radioing home.

    • Re:I'm kind of surprised... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Skyshadow ( 508 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:49AM (#8279145) Homepage
      that they haven't implemented some form of relay satellite over Mars already.

      Well, they *are* using existing orbiters to communicate with the current generation of orbiters. You know, just like the headline there says.

      I suspect that before any serious Mars exploration ramps up, a set of satellites in martian geosync would be a good idea. Not only would that facilitate communiation with anything actually on the planet, but it could also provide for a global positioning system.

      The real issue up to this point is that we just haven't needed that sort of thing yet. If/when we send people (especially if we follow Zubrin's advice and send them for 500+ day stays, or my advice and just build a colony and get on with it), that will change. If nothing else, just increasing the amount of bits you can push by sending a constant stream of lower-power 1's and 0's to a satellite instead of screaming data at the DSN here on earth a few hours a day would probably be a big benefit to future missions.

      • Re:I'm kind of surprised... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by I don't want to spen ( 638810 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @09:06AM (#8279187) Journal
        Geostationary orbit satellites only last about 10-15 years before the satellites run out of fuel. I don't know if a Martian equivalent would need more or less fuel due to the lower gravity. The current orbiters can also do useful planetary observation as well as acting as a communication relay, precisely because they do orbit over the planet's surface and can see the whole of it from close range. I doubt that 3 aerostationary, or whatever the correct Martian term is, satellites would adequately perform observations for their much higher orbit as well as providing blanket comms coverage for the planet. Plus power considerations etc. I'm sure it will happen, but not for a good while yet.
        • Just a though, but perhaps with the lower gravity ion engines could be used to stay in the proper orbit. That would sure increase lifetime.

        • Re:I'm kind of surprised... (Score:4, Informative)

          by RayBender ( 525745 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @01:39PM (#8280722) Homepage
          Geostationary orbit satellites only last about 10-15 years before the satellites run out of fuel. I don't know if a Martian equivalent would need more or less fuel due to the lower gravity.

          Likely somewhat less. Geostationary comsats spend much of their fuel counteracting the effects of the Moon, which tends to pull them out of place. There is no moon around Mars that's large enough to cause problems. On the other hand, Mars os far enough away that it take s bunch of fuel just to get there.

          By the way, the GPS network does NOT use geostationary staellites - they are in "half-Geo" orbits; the problem with getting the equivalent of a GPS network around Mars is that you'd need ~24 satellites. The GPS net is a big constellation.

        • Geostationary orbit satellites only last about 10-15 years before the satellites run out of fuel. I don't know if a Martian equivalent would need more or less fuel due to the lower gravity.

          Less I'd imagine, but not directly due to the lower gravity - it's drag that causes them to use fuel, and since Mars has less atmosphere than earth, I would imagine there would be less drag at geostationary heights. (Although geostationary orbit on mars would be closer to the surface).

    • I talked with some of the engineers, and it seems they were just waiting for iptables to mature before they did testing.

    • Re:I'm kind of surprised... (Score:5, Informative)

      by Helvick ( 657730 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @09:40AM (#8279343) Homepage Journal
      Simple - the primary mission objectives for Orbiters is remote imaging and a low altitude polar orbit is ideal for that because it gives almost total planetary coverage. It means that communications windows with landers are very short (8-12 minutes a day for Odyssey, MGS and Mars Express) but they can cover landers anywhere on the planet at high bandwidth for those communication windows.

      This will be the case for the next Orbiter (Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter 2005) and any others prior to the Mars Telecommunications Orbiter which has a primary objetive of being a proper telecoms relay. MTO will provide at least 10x the current bandwidth, communication windows up to 8 hours in duration and will use optical as well as S-Band\X-Band radio links.

    • Re:I'm kind of surprised... (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, that was suppose to happen. [nasa.gov] the current admin was trying to kill it. Now, that they are supposedly going after the moon and mars, who knows? Perhaps, W's people will quit trying to kill good stuff.
    • Most satellites still have to deal with temperature variation as they pass in and out of shadow. Fuel is an issue too, they usually have to burn fuel to keep the orbit, due to the craft continuously colliding with dust particles and solar wind, slowing it down. A lagrange point (discussed about 3 weeks ago here on /.) would be a better alternative because if they picked an L4 or L5 (iirc) no orbit-maintaining fuel would be required. Also keep in mind... the more satellites you relay through, the greater

  • See naked little green women at SpiritRover.com (Score:3, Funny)

    by BenJeremy ( 181303 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:40AM (#8279115)
    ...Yeah, I told my wife I meant to type SpiritRover.org - Doh!

  • USATODAY.com for all your science needs... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by John Seminal ( 698722 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:40AM (#8279116) Journal
    Radio signals take several minutes, travelling at the speed of light, to traverse the void between the two planets

    Hmmm. Funny, NASA does not say anything about that.

    Anyways, I guess it is good to have an article which might stirr up support in the community as a whole.

    So, what is next? Will every planet in the solar system have a series of satelites that can form a solar system wide network? If this experiment of launching rovers is a success on mars, as it looks to be, then I can see a day when we have rovers on all the planets, perhaps even a manned station on different planets.

    Too bad Gene Roddenberry is not alive to see the begenning...

    • Re:USATODAY.com for all your science needs... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AeroIllini ( 726211 ) <aeroillini@nOsPaM.gmail.com> on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:52AM (#8279151)
      USA Today, is right, though. The lag time between Earth and Mars is anywhere between 3 and 22 minutes when Earth and Mars are clostest and farthest away from each other in their orbits.

      And I think NASA has had plans to incorporate signal relay satellites for some time. Of course, NASA plans to build many more probes/satellites than actually get launched, so we're just now seeing satellites with relay capabilities. There were plans as far back as 1997 to launch a series of satellites whose only purpose was to relay signals from other spacecraft. Interplanetary routers, if you will. However, due to budget cuts, the capability was instead built into satellites with otherwise scientific payloads.

      • Communications Relays (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Detritus ( 11846 )
        The problem is that it is much easier to build a satellite tracking system on the Earth's surface. The antennas can be large, the environment is benign, the hardware is cheaper and can be tweaked, repaired and upgraded. Plus there is relatively unlimited power and space, and there are human beings to make decisions. You need a compelling reason to try to do that in space. On the Earth, if an antenna mechanism gets stuck, you can send out Joe to whack it with a hammer. In space, you lose the whole antenna, p
        • Even there they had to cheat a bit, by doing the beam-forming for the phased array multiple access antenna on the ground instead of on the TDRS spacecraft.

          I'll admit my ignorance, to me this sounds a bit like "they had to split the dylithium crystal array into a 4 dimensional plexus to feed the antimatter containment tubes"..

          Perhaps you could elaborate a bit foor poor souls like me?

          • Re:Communications Relays (Score:5, Informative)

            by Detritus ( 11846 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @11:43AM (#8280035) Homepage
            Phased array antenna systems are used for applications like air defense radar, where you need to track multiple inbound targets, and satellite communications where the satellite transmits to multiple stations on the ground. The difference between a phased array and a parabolic dish is that the parabolic dish is mechanically aimed and can only point at one target at a time, while a phased array is electronically steered and can simultaneously track multiple targets.

            A phased array is composed of a large number of simple antennas in a regular pattern. Each of the simple antennas is connected to a phase controlling element, usually controlled by a computer. By adjusting the phase of each simple antenna, the array's radiation pattern can be manipulated to form one or more directional beams, without having to move any mechanical parts.

            For NASA's application on TDRS, it allows them to simultaneously track and communicate with multiple satellites in low-Earth orbit, with a single electronically steered antenna system.

            The trick NASA pulled with the phased array antenna on TDRS was to take the phase controllers off the spacecraft and put them at the TDRS ground station. The TDRS spacecraft takes the output of all the simple antenna elements and retransmits each one to the ground station. The ground station has a magic phasing/combiner box that takes the outputs of all the simple antennas and adjusts the phase of each signal and combines them under computer control. This splits the phased array into two parts, with part in space (simple antenna array) and part on the ground (phasing/combiner/control computer). This removes a big chunk of hardware and complexity from the spacecraft and relocates it to the ground station.

            Looking at the TDRS web page, the latest series of TDRS spacecraft (TDRS-H, I, J) have the beam-forming hardware on board the spacecraft, instead of doing it on the ground.

        • I agree that there are problems with such a system. Keeping components on Earth is always much easier than doing it in space, especially if they are sensitive electronics.

          However NASA does have two compelling reasons: the rotation of the Earth and the rotation of Mars.

          Without satellite relays, if the probes are on the opposite side of Mars, they have to wait several hours before the Earth is in view again to transmit or receive data. On the same token, in order for NASA to transmit or receive that data, t

      • Not even that good. (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Civil_Disobedient ( 261825 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @11:39AM (#8280010)
        The lag time between Earth and Mars is anywhere between 3 and 22 minutes when Earth and Mars are clostest and farthest away from each other in their orbits

        And just to make matters worse, you've got to deal with some serious high-gain amplification to "dial them up". Beaming cable over a satellite's easy -- sending it millions of miles away means a lot more power (a scarce commodity on a satellite to begin with) or a much more sensitive antenna on the recieving end. I don't know what the current data transmission rates with the things we sent to Mars, but for reference, the Magellan probe back in the 90's had a transmission rate of 115 - 268.9 kilobits/sec.

        It is really amazing to consider that we now have a "spy" satellite orbitting Mars relaying images of the surface back to us on Earth, and that it's sensors are good enough to show us photos of the landing of the rover on the surface [nasa.gov]. Just incredible. But this technology is still in its infancy -- we've still got decades before we land a man on the planet. This is an amazing page about the Soviet exploration of Venus [mentallandscape.com] that may also be of interest.
        • From their website...

          The data rates from the Mars Surveyor to Earth are 1105, 2856, and 9240 bps and realtime rates are 29260 and 63580 bps.
          • News reports earlier this week (02/14/2004) claimed that NASA had just upped the data rate to 256kbps. In light of the discussion here about using the orbiters as routers, that makes perfect sense -- use the rovers' high-gain antennas to shoot bits into orbit at a higher rate, then use the orbiters to send them back to us.
            • I also read somewhere that one of the new systems that is going to be tested is the use of the Ka Band for data transmission instead of what they normally use (X-Band), which I believe increases the amount of data that can be sent an order of magnitude or so. The X-Band tops out at 400 kbps, I believe.
        • It is really amazing to consider that we now have a "spy" satellite orbitting Mars relaying images of the surface back to us on Earth, and that it's sensors are good enough to show us photos of the landing of the rover on the surface. Just incredible.

          I wonder how long it will be before Beagle is found this way...

        • Re:Not even that good. (Score:5, Interesting)

          by dvd_tude ( 69482 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @04:07PM (#8281676)
          They do have one thing that helps (as it turns out, quite a bit): no in-band background noise to interfere with the communication.

          Anyway, yes their data rates are lower than diect broadcast TV satellite. It's all about the relative S/N owing to inverse square law and the greater distance to the deep space vehicle. The rover and orbiter link rates are on par with Magellan's - 128~256 kb/s, compared with about 30mb/s for a DTV satellite transponder channel.

          Read this chapter [nasa.gov] in JPL's Space Flight Primer [nasa.gov] for more information about how their space vehicle comms work. A tidbit I found in there: they use coherent (phase-locked) transmission and Doppler to very accurately measure the remote vehicle's position. That's a neat hack.

          Both things are amazing when you look at them, for different reasons. Deep space communication is amazing because it's possible. Direct broadcast satellite is amazing because it's so cheap!

          A nitpick: the 'milestone' stated in the article, which was apparently overlooked by many of the posters here is the fact that, for the first time, a non-NASA spacecraft (in this case the ESA's Mars Express Orbiter) got into the act as a data relay for the rovers. This is more a statement about cooperation than it is about outright technical achievement. It is a political milestone, much the same as our (America's) cooperation with Russia in the ISS and in developing new rocket booster technology. Yet while it is political, it is a good thing in that it's another step toward recognizing that for space exploration to be fully realized it needs to be global endeavor, not a national one.

          This is very much at odds with Bush's election-year 'man to the moon' pipe dream that serves no real scientific end and is more about beating the collective American wiener on the table with China.
          • the 'milestone' stated in the article, which was apparently overlooked by many of the posters here is the fact that, for the first time, a non-NASA spacecraft (in this case the ESA's Mars Express Orbiter) got into the act as a data relay for the rovers

            It's also neat that some of these satellites are doing double-duty -- that is, they have certain bandwidth limitations that act as a bottleneck to all the data they could be sending from their normal scientific operation modes. The Mars Express orbiter had

    • What? (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      >> Radio signals take several minutes, travelling at the speed of light, to traverse the void between the two planets
      > Hmmm. Funny, NASA does not say anything about that.

      That's because it's obvious to anyone with a 3rd grade education. NASA has a lot of interesting stuff to report and thankfully they're not dumbing down their releases even further.

      > Too bad Gene Roddenberry is not alive to see the begenning...

      Actually, Pioneer and Voyager were the beginning, even if they didn't use relay sate
    • Too bad Gene Roddenberry is not alive to see the beginning...

      Hmm, I always thought it begun on my 17th birthday :)

      >>>>> The Apollo 8 Christmas Eve Broadcast [nasa.gov]

      CC.
    • guess it is good to have an article which might stirr up support in the community

      As long as it doesn't sadd le us with too much baggage.

  • Where's the redundant link! (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Damnit, two space agency and hundred of million of dollars and they don't have a redundant link? What happens when some backhoe disrupts the signal? Stupid rocket scientists...

  • IPN not like TCP/IP (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 14, 2004 @08:53AM (#8279152)
    The IPN and the Internet are two different things.

    The IPN does not use TCP or another transmission control protocol because it is simply not possible to acknowledge data/rerequest data if the latency is that big (minutes to days in the solar system).

    • Re:IPN not like TCP/IP (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Quite the contrary, the IPN and our terrestrial Internet are rather closely related. Don't think a lot of the lessons of a best-attempt network have been ignored.

      http://www.ipnsig.org/

      I recommend reading there about the entire suite of protocols, *all* based on terrestial Internet equivalents.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • ... wake me up when they start putting zerconf in the rovers ...

  • Things we can look forward to (Score:5, Funny)

    by cyranoVR ( 518628 ) <`moc.liamg' `ta' `RVonaryc'> on Saturday February 14, 2004 @09:34AM (#8279318) Homepage Journal

    Martian Email Scam ("my recently deposed president Marvin...")

    Movie hax0rz routing their connection "through Mars" to avoid detection

    RIAA supoenas Spirit rover

  • Ping thread (Score:4, Redundant)

    by eap ( 91469 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @09:55AM (#8279400) Journal
    Please place all ping mars with time=(large number) jokes under this thread.

    Thank you

    • ok (Score:1)

      by emmons ( 94632 )
      >ping spirit.mars.ipn.nasa.gov

      Pinging spirit.mars.ipn.nasa.gov [63.210.104.88] with 32 bytes of data:

      1 0 0 0 66.46.176.3 -
      2 0 0 0 216.191.97.41 pos5-3.core1-mtl.bb.allstream.net
      3 16 16 0 216.191.65.173 pos2-1.core2-tor.bb.allstream.net
      4 16 0 15 216.191.65.243 srp2-0.gwy1-tor.bb.allstream.net
      5 16 15 32 12.125.142.5 -
      6 16 15 32 12.123.5.218 gbr5-p80.cgcil.ip.att.net
      7 157 234 219 12.123.6.33 ggr2-p300.cgcil.ip.att.net
      8 32 15 16 209.0.227.77 so-1-1-0.edge1.chicago1.level3.net
      9 32 15 16 209.244.8.13 so-2-1-

  • KA9Q (Score:4, Interesting)

    by bigattichouse ( 527527 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @10:11AM (#8279490) Homepage
    Just a dressed up store-and-forward packet radio, right? KA9Q was written well over 10 years ago, and can route IPv4 traffic over such a connection.
  • Considering that it's "just a start", I wonder how long it will take to actually establish a real network that is interplanetary? Obviously there is little need for one at the moment, but once there are manned bases on Mars, this kind of network would be essential.

    The beauty of IP over ethernet is that it's not just dedicated to one single function. It can be used for a variety of applications and is really only limited by bandwidth and latency. Overcoming the latency would be a really huge issue betwee
  • Forget all those lame ping jokes, I want to see the traceroute.

    -- Bander
  • Spam from E.T.? DOH
  • It's not long until some hacker starts using Spirit as a porn server. After all, wherever there is internet, there is porn.

    Only question now is, will it be imported, or native?
  • ...but I'll be impressed when they make a working ansible.
  • When will Mars pass behind the sun and we lose all communication with it for a few weeks? Could happen while the Rovers are still functional...

  • Reminds me of... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Beolach ( 518512 ) <beolach AT juno DOT com> on Saturday February 14, 2004 @01:54PM (#8280820) Homepage Journal
    A comment in the Linux kernel:
    /*

    * [...] Note that 120 sec is
    * defined in the protocol as the maximum possible RTT. I guess
    * we'll have to use something other than TCP to talk to the
    * University of Mars.
    *
    * PAWS allows us longer timeouts and large windows, so once
    * implemented ftp to mars will work nicely. We will have to fix
    * the 120 second clamps though!
    */
    --(from /usr/src/linux-2.6.2/net/ipv4/tcp_timer.c, concerning RTT [round trip time])

  • Submitter misread news article and release (Score:4, Insightful)

    by benh57 ( 525452 ) <bhinesNO@SPAMalumni.ucsd.edu> on Saturday February 14, 2004 @02:12PM (#8280926) Homepage
    The news article and the press release noted that this was the first INTERNATIONAL interplanetary network, IE, NASA Rover -> ESA Satellite -> NASA ground station. Read it again, guys. That was the whole point, that ESA was involved for the first time.

    Orbiting networks via NASA Rover -> NASA Sat -> NASA ground have been done repeatedly since the rovers landed well over a month ago.

  • one giant hop backwards for the press (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Doc Ruby ( 173196 ) on Saturday February 14, 2004 @02:23PM (#8281025) Homepage Journal
    This InterPlanetNet is a giant leap for mankind, compared to the small step for a man on the first "spacewalk". Yet it receives less press coverage than the first American spacewalk [mach1collectibles.com] (Russian Alexi Leonov was the first "man in space", spacewalking 3 months earlier). This demonstrates the point driven home so well in _The Right Stuff_: the space program is primarily a human adventure, and secondarily a science/engineering program. Our species will be living on the IPN grid for millennia, but it's not photogenic. When we get a "JenniCam in Orbit" reality show, about 5 unlikely ISS roommates, we'll see space colonization become a priority.

  • I snooped mars IP traffic....... (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    And following a deep analysis of the data in the packets I am able to anounce that there **is** life on mars.

    Whatsmore it is in desperate need of Viagra, likes young teens and thier horses, and interest rates up there are the lowwest ever.

    No sign of intelligence however.
  • I don't know why NASA just doesn't use this [uspto.gov]

    "Hyper-Light-Speed Antenna A method to transmit and receive electromagnetic waves which comprises generating opposing magnetic fields having a plane of maximum force running perpendicular to a longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating a heat source along an axis parallel to the longitudinal axis of the magnetic field; generating an accelerator parallel to and in close proximity to the heat source, thereby creating an input and output port; and generati

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