Nov 18 2008
From The Space Library
NASA announced that engineers from NASA’s JPL, working as part of an agency-wide team, had successfully tested the first deep space communications network modeled on the Internet. NASA, in partnership with Vinton G. Cerf, a Vice President at Google, had designed the software, called Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN). Unlike the Internet’s Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) communication suite, DTN did not assume end-to- to-end connection, enabling it to withstand delays and disconnections in space. Instead of discarding information that could not reach its destination, each of DTN’s network nodes could store information until it could safely communicate with the next node. Engineers had begun testing DTN in October 2008, transmitting dozens of space images. As a Mars data-relay orbiter, they had used NASA’s Epoxi spacecraft, which was approximately 20 million miles (32,186,880 kilometers) from Earth.
NASA, “NASA Successfully Tests First Deep Space Internet,” news release 08-298, 18 November 2008, http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/nov/HQ_08-298_Deep_space_internet.html (accessed 22 August 2011).
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30
