The Sky is NOT the Limit Anymore: Future Architecture of the Interplanetary Internet

Abstract

Fifty years after the Apollo program, space exploration has recently been regaining popularity thanks to missions with high media coverage. Future space exploration and space station missions will require specific networks to interconnect Earth with other objects and planets in the solar system. The interconnections of these networks form the core of an Interplanetary Internet (IPN). More specifically, we consider the IPN as the combination of physical infrastructure, network architecture, and technologies to provide communication and navigation services for missions and further applications. Compared to the current implementation of the Internet, nodes composing the core of the IPN are highly heterogeneous (base stations on planets, satellites etc.). Moreover, nodes are in constant motion over intersecting elliptical planes, which results in highly variable delays and even temporary unavailability of parts of the network. As such, an IPN has to overcome the challenges of conventional opportunistic networks, with much higher latency and jitter (from a couple of minutes to several days) and the additional constraint of long-term autonomous operations. In this paper, we highlight the challenges of IPN, demonstrate the elements to deploy within the areas of interest, and propose the technologies to handle deep space communication. We provide recommendations for an evolutionary IPN implementation, coherent with specific milestones of space exploration.

A Roadmap Toward a Unified Space Communication Architecture

“…Bhasin et al [17], [18] propose an integrated and evolutive communication architecture that maximizes data delivery, copes with the high data volumes, and provides high communication bandwidth. Alhilal et al [19] propose an evolutionary architecture that adapts the milestones of future space exploration missions, near term, mid term, and long term. Their proposed architecture supports forthcoming scientific missions and space exploration projects with minimum cost and time.…”

“…Content may change prior to final publication. 18 and the CCSDS 19 . Overall, the SSI paves the way for deploying applications in space akin to terrestrial internet applications, e.g., reliable transfer of files and messages.…”

“…Figure 12 illustrates a snapshot of long-term solar system-wide IPN, where the backbone network interconnects the spacecraft deployed at the Lagrange points. Lagrange points are where all the gravitational forces acting between two objects cancel each other out and can be used by spacecraft to hover [19], [61]. These spacecraft operate as relay stations that relay data received from the satellites orbiting a planet to the Earth's DSN.…”

“…The JWST telescope, for instance, will orbit the Sun 1.5 million kilometers (1 million miles) away from the Earth at the second Lagrange point L2. Many research works [19], [112], [113] propose to station relay satellites at the Earth-Sun liberation points. However, the costs and benefits of such a deployment remain an open research question.…”

“…Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF): ietf.org19 Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS): ccsds.org…”