Adopting Internet Standards for Orbital Use

Acta Astronautica, 2005

After twenty months of flying, testing and demonstrating a Cisco mobile access router, originally designed for terrestrial use, onboard the low-Earth-orbiting UK-DMC satellite as part of a larger merged ground/space IP-based internetwork, we use our experience to examine the benefits and drawbacks of integration and standards reuse for small satellite missions.

International Journal of Satellite Communications and Networking, 2007

An Internet router was integrated into the UK-DMC remote-sensing satellite as a secondary experimental payload. This commercial product has been orbiting in space for over three years. We describe the integration of the router and satellite and the successful on-orbit testing of the router, which took place using the Virtual Mission Operations Center (VMOC) application as part of a larger systems internetworking exercise. Placing this Cisco router in Low Earth Orbit (CLEO) onboard a small satellite is one step towards extending the terrestrial networking model to the near-Earth space environment as part of a merged space-ground architecture.

17th AIAA International Communications Satellite Systems Conference and Exhibit, 1998

The realization of the full potential of the National Information Infrastructure (NII) and Global Information Infrastructure (GII) requires seamless interoperability of emerging satellite networks with terrestrial networks. This requires a cooperative effort between industry, academia and government agencies to develop and advocate new, satellite-friendly communication protocols and modifications to existing communication protocol standards. These groups have recently come together to actively participating in a number of standards making bodies including: the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) Forum, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and the Telecommunication Industry Association (TIA) to ensure that issues regarding efficient use of these protocols over satellite links are not overlooked. This paper will summarize the progress made toward standards development to achieve seamless integration and accelerate the deployment of multimedia applications.

Sensors and Materials

Currently, no wireless network service is being offered in space. This fact has caused satellite developers to establish their own wireless network with a low coverage area that does not function very well. These problems can be resolved by setting up an effective wireless network that can be offered as a service to satellites in orbit. This study is focused on designing a high-quality wireless-in-space network to connect satellites in orbit to the Internet. Such a network would enable satellites to be controlled through the Internet from the Earth without having their own ground stations. In this paper, various aspects of the design of a network setup standard are discussed. These aspects include appropriate wireless communication and the construction of a model satellite that can be connected to the network from space. The work also included testing the design by setting up the Internet network for use above Thailand's territory and launching the original model satellite for the demonstration of the principle. The sensor data was then transmitted in real time to audiences from all over the country and used to design an Internet network in space with global coverage, which is a target for further development.

In this paper the architecture of the IST-BRAHMS project (Broadband Access for High speed Multimedia via Satellite) is described. BRAHMS aims at specifying an IPbased architecture for broadband satellite access independently of the particular satellite technology adopted in the satellite link. Its goal is to promote integration and harmonization of many access network services and functions, whilst allowing flexibility for optimized or proprietary air interfaces This objective is achieved by supporting a choice of several RTD (Radio Technology Dependent) access technologies through a common set of RTI (Radio Technology Independent) protocols.

Mobile Lightweight …, 2009

As the number and complexity of space missions increases, space communications enter a new era, where internetworking gradually replaces or assists traditional telecommunication protocols. The Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) architecture has recently emerged as a communication system for challenged networks, originally designed for the Interplanetary Internet. In the context of our project with ESA called "Extending Internet into Space -ESA DTN Testbed Implementation and Evaluation" we intend to deploy a distributed, flexible and scalable DTN testbed for space communications. The testbed will provide the supportive infrastructure for the design and evaluation of space-suitable DTN protocols, architectures, and routing policies to allow efficient deep-space communications. Throughout the project, we will demonstrate the operational capabilities of the DTN protocols in space; design and evaluate novel transport protocols and architectures for reliable data transfer in space; and investigate routing algorithms that comply with ESA's policies and resource status.

2001

We outline the first steps of an effort to start defining the communication architecture for the next generation of space missions, that will support NASA's "faster, better, cheaper" concept and will enable new types of collaborative science, where investigators can access their data from space "anytime, anywhere" via direct communication with the instruments on the spacecraft. We discuss the building blocks for a conceptual design of a network architecture that could support and take advantage of IP-capable spacecraft. We show that access from a large number of ground stations (that could be directly connected to the existing Internet infrastructure) could increase spacecraft availability time by a significant factor. We discuss possible multiple access techniques that could enable the transition to an on demand operation, where spacecraft share space spectrum dynamically. We also discuss the particular requirements of a next generation of missions consisting of constellations of several small spacecraft and introduce a number of new complex network control, scheduling, routing, data management and communication problems that need to be addressed for this topology.

2002

This paper presents work being done at NASA/GSFC by the Operating Missions as Nodes on the Internet (OMNI) project to demonstrate the application of Internet communication technologies to space communication. The goal is to provide global addressability and standard network protocols and applications for future space missions. It describes the communication architecture and operations concepts that will be deployed and tested on a Space Shuttle flight scheduled to fly in August 2002. This is a NASA Hitchhiker mission called Communication and Navigation Demonstration On Shuttle (CANDOS). The mission will be using a small programmable transceiver mounted in the Shuttle bay that can communicate through NASA's ground tracking stations as well as NASA's space relay satellite system. The transceiver includes a processor running the Linux operating system and a standard synchronous serial interface that supports the High-level Data Link Control (HDLC) framing protocol. One of the main goals will be to test the operation of the Mobile IP protocol (RFC 2002) for automatic routing of data as the Shuttle passes from one contact to another. Other protocols to be utilized onboard CANDOS include secure login (SSH), UDP-based reliable file transfer (MDP), and blind commanding using UDP. The paper describes how each of these standard protocols available in the Linux operating system can be used to support communication with a space vehicle. It will discuss how each protocol is suited to support the range of special communication needs of space missions.

Acta Astronautica, 2011

Students in higher education, and scientific and technological researchers want to communicate with the International Space Station (ISS), download live satellite images, and receive telemetry, housekeeping and science/engineering data from nano-satellites and larger spacecrafts. To meet this need the Ecuadorian Civilian Space Agency (EXA) has recently provided the civilian world with an internet-to-orbit gateway (Hermes-A/ Minotaur) Space Flight Control Center (SFCC) available for public use. The gateway has a maximum range of tracking and detection of 22,000 km and sensitivity such that it can receive and discriminate the signals from a satellite transmitter with power $ 0.1 W. The capability is enough to receive the faintest low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellites. This gateway virtually connects participating internet clients around the world to a remote satellite ground station (GS), providing a broad community for multinational cooperation. The goal of the GS is to lower financial and engineering barriers that hinder access to science and engineering data from orbit. The basic design of the virtual GS on a user side is based on free software suites. Using these and other software tools the GS is able to provide access to orbit for a multitude of users without each having to go through the costly setups. We present the design and implementation of the virtual GS in a higher education and scientific outreach settings. We also discuss the basic architecture of the single existing system and the benefits of a proposed distributed system. Details of the software tools and their applicability to synchronous round-the-world tracking, monitoring and processing performed by students and teams

The mobile internet is already upon us. As advancing information and communication technologies (ICT's) enable the emergence of an information society, the socio-economic demand for mobile broadband connectivity continues to grow. …One technology has the potential to bypass this socio-economic threat. The coverage and reach of space-based communications technology is ubiquitous. Its primary strength lies in its ability to transcend many of the barriers and obstacles of terrestrial infrastructure deployment. Yet, whereas the interoperability of terrestrial infrastructure has allowed the Internet to grow in strength and usage, the growth of costly space-based infrastructure has yet to provide the same potential. ...Nowhere in the space applications sector is the need for interoperability with terrestrial and other space-based infrastructure so critical to its future as it is fixed/mobile two-way Internet communications. The primary conclusion of our literature review was that there is currently no widely adopted open-standard in existence, a fact that impedes the adoption, implementation and growth f space-based infrastructure. A decisive shift towards a philosophy of interoperability and industry standardization may therefore be the key to counteract this trend, as well as to accelerate the rollout of mobile broadband connectivity.