Interplanetary Internet

[4] As of 2024 agencies and companies working towards bringing the network to fruition include NASA, ESA, SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Having reached the era where networking and IP on board spacecraft have been shown to be feasible and reliable, a forward-looking study of the bigger picture was the next phase.

[16] What is needed then, is a standard way to achieve end-to-end communication through multiple regions in a disconnected, variable-delay environment using a generalized suite of protocols.

[citation needed] The recognition of this requirement led to the concept of a "bundle" as a high-level way to address the generalized Store-and-Forward problem.

[citation needed] Delay-tolerant networking (DTN) was designed to enable standardized communications over long distances and through time delays.

"Lasercom sends information using beams of light and optical elements, such as telescopes and optical amplifiers, rather than RF signals, amplifiers, and antennas"[24] NASA JPL tested the DTN protocol with their Deep Impact Networking (DINET) experiment on board the Deep Impact/EPOXI spacecraft in October, 2008.

[26] NASA and BioServe Space Technologies, a research group at the University of Colorado, have been continuously testing DTN on two Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus (CGBA) payloads.

[30] These initial experiments provide insight into future missions where DTN will enable the extension of networks into deep space to explore other planets and solar system points of interest.

[31] DTN has several major arenas of application, in addition to the Interplanetary Internet, which include sensor networks, military and tactical communications, disaster recovery, hostile environments, mobile devices and remote outposts.

[32] As an example of a remote outpost, imagine an isolated Arctic village, or a faraway island, with electricity, one or more computers, but no communication connectivity.

With the addition of a simple wireless hotspot in the village, plus DTN-enabled devices on, say, dog sleds or fishing boats, a resident would be able to check their e-mail or click on a Wikipedia article, and have their requests forwarded to the nearest networked location on the sled's or boat's next visit, and get the replies on its return.

For example, the International Space Station has been connected to the regular terrestrial Internet since January 22, 2010 when the first unassisted tweet was posted.

The experiment used the DTN protocol to demonstrate technology that one day could enable Internet-like communications that can support habitats or infrastructure on another planet.

The speed of light, illustrated here by a beam of light traveling from Earth to the Moon , would limit the speed at which messages would be able to travel in the interplanetary Internet. In this example, it takes light 1.26 seconds to travel from the Earth to the Moon. Due to the vast distances involved, much longer delays may be incurred than in the Earth-bound Internet.
Mars to Earth communication is a simple example of Interplanetary Internet
Simplified Interplanetary Internet overview, Mars to Earth communication
ICANN meeting, Los Angeles , USA, 2007. The marquee pays a humorous homage to the Ed Wood film Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), and the operating system Plan 9 from Bell Labs , while namedropping Internet pioneer Vint Cerf using a spoof of a then-current film Surf's Up (2007).
The Deep Impact mission