The Moon Will Soon Have Its Own Internet (autoevolution.com) 59
"Humanity will return to the lunar surface in 2024 as part of the Artemis program," writes the Auto Evolution site.
"However, before NASA begins shuttling people to our natural satellite, it has to build a network there that will go beyond Earth's low orbit and connect space to Earth in a sort of Internet connection..." The network's name? LunaNet:
Astronauts will be able to use the LunaNet via numerous nodes and communicate with the crew on and around the Moon in the same manner that we use Wi-Fi here on Earth. In addition, missions using the network will have access to position and time signals, allowing astronauts and rovers to navigate the rugged lunar terrain and return to their base. LunaNet will also use space-weather instruments to identify potentially dangerous solar activity, such as flares that erupt from the Sun and send harsh radiation towards the astronauts. With this new connectivity, the crew can be directly alerted. This will cut down the time it takes for network management on Earth to do so. These warnings will be comparable to the ones we receive on our phones when there is hazardous weather. The architecture's capabilities will also include a lunar search and rescue capability...
Researchers could also use LunaNet antennas to peer into deep space and search for radio signals from distant celestial objects. Altogether, the architecture's capabilities will give scientists a new platform to test space theories, allowing them to extend their scientific knowledge. Recently, NASA released the "Draft LunaNet Interoperability Specification" in order to kickstart the development of this new "lunar internet." Technical discussions among industry experts from around the world are expected to follow.
Researchers could also use LunaNet antennas to peer into deep space and search for radio signals from distant celestial objects. Altogether, the architecture's capabilities will give scientists a new platform to test space theories, allowing them to extend their scientific knowledge. Recently, NASA released the "Draft LunaNet Interoperability Specification" in order to kickstart the development of this new "lunar internet." Technical discussions among industry experts from around the world are expected to follow.
comcast moon has an 500GB cap (Score:3)
comcast moon has an 500GB cap
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No worries, just so long as they're not hitting Pornhub for 4K videos every night...
A.
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And if they are, they can get around the cap by paying that extra $50,000,000/month "unlimited" fee.
Genemmt (Score:1)
Information, please (Score:2)
In addition, missions using the network will have access to position and time signals, allowing astronauts and rovers to navigate the rugged lunar terrain and return to their base.
Am I missing something? I know one can't use a compass on the Moon to get your bearings, but why would they need this network to return to their base? Wouldn't a simple radio signal suffice? You have a dish on your rover. Swing it around until the signal is the strongest then follow it home.
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Blockages and multipath make that a somewhat error-prone approach, and won't help you avoid known hazards as you navigate. It's probably also just as much to help navigate on the way out. Think about it: "We just found a deposit of water ice out here." "Where are you?" "Uh, by the big gray rock. There's a crater on the other side...."
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I'm assuming for efficiency of navigation, there might be multiple bases on the moon, for various stages/areas of exploration. If every base puts out a signal, it can cause issues. Lastly, some error correction may need to be done on a sophisticated level. a solar flare can take out electronics, and an open antenna can fry the devices when it hits them, especially on a vehicle.
Lastly, positioning helps mark spots for later exploration, by allowing them to index and mark sites to revisit.
Back towards the in
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My first inclination is to just use plain old AM radio and voice or even CW if absolutely necessary. There are enough frequencies that every base station could have its own frequency band carved out. Bandwidth is gonna suck, so you won't be remote controlling robots with it, but someone can certainly call for help or ask where they are. That would be the fallback level, because you can get that up and running with rather unsophisticated equipment.
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There are multiple inexpensive, lightweight, and accurate RF based navigation solutions that could be plopped down on the moon.
Oh, and there is always inertial navigation which should more than suffice.
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Try that on the Earth sometime. :-) I have hunted my share of radiosondes and this is extremely tricky in practice unless you have a direct line of sight. The signal gets obstructed by terrain and reflects from surfaces.
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No over the horizon capability because there is no atmosphere to bounce off, and the horizon is much closer on the moon.
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You have a dish on your rover. Swing it around until the signal is the strongest then follow it home.
Would be to easy mate.
Looking at the sky and following the stars, or at the orientation of the earth: would be to easy, too.
Or simply having a pole with a kind of flag/reflective device. I doubt one would drive so far away from the base that he is out of visible range of a simple 40m high "tower".
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Even the Apollo astronauts drove well outside of visible range from the lander - the horizon is really close on the Moon, and there are hills etc. They navigated using direction and distance traveled to estimate where they were on the map. This won't be enough for real exploration, traveling dozens or hundreds of miles from the base (and if you're not exploring, why build a base?) And obviously the satellites will be necessary to bounce radio signals off of if you need to call home for any reason. Apollo d
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That is why I said, a high enough mast.
On the other hand I would assume the simplest and cheapest is just to plant a flag every 100 - 200 yards. Assuming you would either explore ina kind of spiral pattern or a radial one.
Also your prints of your tires will probably last close to forever. Then again: perhaps with good enough receivers you could abuse Earth GPS system. At least on the side always showing to earth.
Perhaps as in your example, the orbiter was still manned, and they plan for an orbiting manned l
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Radio won't very well on the moon unless you have a line of sight (in which case, you'd just use sight to navigate). It's not like Earth where radio signals bounce off the ionosphere. The Apollo rovers navigated using a gyroscopic mechanism to determine heading, and odometers for distance... Rather crude but good enough for short trips. Radio to the "base" was not necessary for them because there was nobody at the lander during rover excursions - all EVAs were done by both astronauts on the landing team, wh
Few people know that Orson Wells War of the Worlds (Score:4, Funny)
started once Mars got Twitter.
retailiation? (Score:2)
So it was a retaliatory attack.
Oh great ... (Score:2)
First Contact will be the Dallas Buyers Club LLC going after a piggy back alien connection who claims he was "just trying to understand Earth culture" by torrenting popular movies.
He would have bought the Blu Ray but they don't have a player, or Earth currency, or credit. Privately he said he'll use a VPN next time.
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Damn aliens never seed, though - they're always just leechers.
Isn't this almost already a thing? (Score:3, Interesting)
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That'll be a solution as soon as you figure out how to stop Bezos from filing a lawsuit.
Re:Isn't this almost already a thing? (Score:4, Informative)
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just need a few modifications to existing satellites and then stick them in orbit around the moon.
Except for a few exceptional cases like near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), lunar orbits are unstable. Without active control, the satellites will crash in a few months.
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lunar orbits are unstable. Without active control, the satellites will crash in a few months.
And why would that be the case? Does not really sound plausible.
Mascons. [Re:Isn't this almost already a thing?] (Score:4, Informative)
lunar orbits are unstable. Without active control, the satellites will crash in a few months.
And why would that be the case? Does not really sound plausible.
The moon is not a uniform sphere. The non-uniformities ("mascons"-- short for mass concentrations) perturb the orbits. The perturbations randomly lower the perilune, and when the perilune intersects the lunar surface, the orbit terminates.
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Yeah, but with a high enough orbit or an orbit avoiding known "heavy spots", that should not happen.
And the claim "is unstable" with your explanation given, would be true for every body that is orbited. I really doubt if you have a 35,000km orbit around the moon, that there are ill effects during the lifetime of the satellite.
I google around a bit, perhaps I find some good sources :D thanx anyway.
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Except for a few exceptional cases like near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO), lunar orbits are unstable. Without active control, the satellites will crash in a few months.
The other notable exceptions being the Earth-Moon Lagrange points. Earth-Moon L1 and L2 are semi-stable orbital locations that are fairly cheap to maintain in terms of propellant, while being conveniently close to Luna. L1 is 61350 km above Luna, between it and Earth, and L2 is 61347 km above Luna. Since NASA is persisting in their installation of Gateway (they signed a fixed price contract with Northrup Grumman in July for $935 million to build the HALO module), a satellite at each of L1 and L2 could pr
And this is news? (Score:1)
I figured as soon as there were two places on the moon that wanted to talk to each other, something akin to "teh internets" wouldn't be far behind.
Personally, I think we should pass laws to protect any possible life on the moon or Mars for that matter from exposure to things like Facebook, 4- and other n-chans, Reddit, and the like. We've already contaminated Earth with that gunk, let's leave the moon and Mars out of it. :)
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But without Facebook, where will the astronauts post their moon selfies?
Amazon women (Score:2)
I can see where this is headed.
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I'm interested in knowing how they'll deliver them. Unless Bezos is ready to cut a deal with SpaceX, this one is a non-starter.
Astronauts: be sure to enable location tracking (Score:3)
Otherwise you won't get the most relevant advertisements... er, I mean space weather.
IP address range ? (Score:3)
Presumably it would make sense to allocate the moon an IP address subnet, make that IPv6, start with a clean sheet no IPv4. This would help with routing if nothing else.
The pentagon saved lots of IPV4 (Score:2)
The pentagon kept lots of IPV4 subnets, specifically for that? Just recently they got reactivated
No, We Won't (Score:4, Interesting)
"Humanity will return to the lunar surface in 2024 as part of the Artemis program," writes the Auto Evolution site
The NASA Office of the Inspector General, in August, stated that "a lunar landing in late 2024 is not feasible" [nasa.gov] and it should be quite obvious, given the confusion in this program about what landing hardware is even going to be flying in less than three years time (the supposed schedule is for September 2024).
And then there is that little problem of funding. In 2020 only $700 million of the $3.7 billion requested for lander development was funded. The NASA Inspector General [spaceflightnow.com] estimated this year that the cost of landing on the Moon as requiring another $50 billion over five years. But the program only got $600 million out of $3.2 billion requested this year. So only about $49 billion and two calendar years short to make that 2024 schedule.
The supposed launch vehicle, the SLS, which has never yet flown, has been funded (to the tune of $35 billion) since 2012 and so it might be ready to actually carry out a mission in 2024 (but we will have to see, the progress on this program makes one skeptical), but no other element of this program will be ready. This program, based on the non-funding, does not actually exist it is little more than a program concept at this point.
And the fundamental reason for the lack of funding is that this program has never had credibility. Schedules were announced, then moved up, without involving any actual engineering or planning. If the ground work for a return to the Moon had been laid, with decent plans for what was going to be accomplished, and schedules developed from actual engineers studying the requirements, then getting Congressional buy-in, the way normal space programs work, then the program might get the funding it actually needs. The SLS white elephant worked this way, and though the wrong solution to the nation's space launch problems, it had an actual engineering program, got funding, and is being built.
Though factors here are different (the secrecy problem is not an issue) this reminds me a bit of the A-12 Avenger II stealth Navy fighter, the flying prototype for was scheduled to be unveiled in 1990, but less than a year before that first flight it was discovered by the Navy that the only thing that had been build was landing gear and some pieces of the wings. The plane did not really exist, and all the schedules they supposedly met were bogus.
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Back in the Apollo era Kennedy wanted to partner with the USSR for a joint mission. Reduce costs for both of them by sharing the workload and technology, and reduce tensions in the Cold War by building trust and cooperating. Unfortunately the idea died with him.
Today the US could cooperate with many other countries. Obviously there is the ESA and JAXA, and Russia, all of whom are part of the ISS project. Wouldn't it be great though if the US could work with China? China is clearly headed to the Moon and bey
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I've never heard why China is on the crap list. Nobody seems to want to talk about China and space. Maybe they're really tough to work with.
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Every president since Bush the Elected has announced an upcoming mission to Mars, none have ever devoted ten minutes to rounding up the funding for it though. NASA's problem since 1969 has been that it relies on a herd of technologically illiterate lawyers in Congress and uninterested accountants in The Office of Management and Budget (TOMB) for project management. Once the politicians and general had pushed aside the engineers it was downhill from there. Even Viking, our only spacecraft in interstellar
With Starlink (Score:2)
Just starlink... (Score:1)
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That would work for about a month, then their orbital instability would make them useless. Lunar orbit is not the same as Earth orbit, and Starlink satellites have no ability to maneuver.
Re: Just starlink... (Score:1)
Radio quiet zones? (Score:3)
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Not being much of an expert on astronomy, I wonder if there are perhaps RF bands they could use that wouldn't be very useful to astronomy, so could be blocked out. I am thinking kind of like the use of sodium street lighting was intended to be easy to filter out of visual astronomy.
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Let me guess (Score:3)
3 billionaires will sue each others until the cows come home.
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no, but rather until the cow jumps over the moon
hawk, off to laugh with the little dog while the cat fiddles
Round trip latency (Score:2)
Approximately 3s -- you may get internet but it ain't gonna be snappy.
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Yes, but the network is also meant to satisfy lunar communication. Gateway to lunar surface communications don't need to go back to Earth. A local communications network enable near realtime control of robots on the surface unlike sending signals from Earth where you would also get that 1.5s delay.
Experience with this also furthers Mars research. There we have a nearly 30 minute round trip for robot communications where a human in orbit could do it in a near real time.
Great, this is where they discover the hive base! (Score:1)
Dammit destiny, its supposed to be fiction!
SCIPS? (Score:2)
I wonder if they're going to use the SCIPS interplanetary internet protocol Vint Cerf has been pushing, or regular TCP/IP? If the latter, they're going to have to modify a few timers, I bet...
LunaNet? Disappoint. (Score:2)
Should have called it Mooninet, and used Ignignokt and Err as its mascots.
The costs... (Score:2)
and the costs are out of this world.
Que all the luna jokes (Score:1)
You know there will be a whole new set of jokes based around luna.