NASA is teaming up with Harvard and developer community TopCoder to figure out how the Internet (or something like it) will function as humans and our spacecraft venture further into other planets’ orbits, interstellar space, and even other star systems.
Unlike TCP(Transmission Control Protocol), RTP (Real-time Transport Protocol), or UDP (User Diagram Protocol), the new protocol needs to be able to handle all kinds of disruption without losing data or security.
So now, NASA and others are working on DTN: Disruption Tolerant Networking, a new architecture that takes into account stuff like massive distances, interference from stars, low-power devices, planetary rotation, you name it.
After a series of experiments on DTN technology last year, NASA space comms chief Badri Younes said, “The demonstration showed the feasibility of using a new communications infrastructure to send commands to a surface robot from an orbiting spacecraft and receive images and data back from the robot.
“The experimental DTN we’ve tested from the space station may one day be used by humans on a spacecraft in orbit around Mars to operate robots on the surface, or from Earth using orbiting satellites as relay stations.”
And this year, NASA’s putting that plan into action with a little crowdsourcing magic.
“This is the first time we have tapped the professional crowd to help develop a major keystone in the future era of space exploration,” said NASA Tournament Lab data scientist Rinat Sergeev in a statement, “and [we] look forward to seeing the community’s 600,000 member strong response.”