Hi, thanks for joining us.
My name is Amber Jacobson and we're coming to you live today
from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland,
here on Cyber Monday - a day when pretty much everybody is
online to do their holiday shopping.
So while you're online today, we wanted to talk to you a little
bit about the Internet.
In an interplanetary sense.
NASA's working on building an interplanetary Internet that
will allow satellites to communicate, no matter where
they might be in the solar system.
The technology that enables this is something called Disruption
Tolerant Networking, and we recently used it to connect
Antarctica with the International Space Station.
We're going to be taking your questions live today throughout
the broadcast, so be sure to leave them in the comments
below.
Joining me today is Space Communications Architect, Dave
Israel to help break down this technology a little bit more for
us.
How are you doing today Dave?
Great, happy to be here.
Awesome.
So Dave, 'space communications architect' sounds like a really
cool title.
What exactly do you do and how does that play into Disruption
Tolerant Networking?
Well it is a really cool job.
I get to, I actually get paid to spend my day thinking about how
future missions and astronauts, as we explore the solar system
and beyond, can communicate back to Earth or even with each other
and to do it in a networked fashion.
What we've seen over the last several decades is that the
Internet has changed the way that we communicate amongst the
things and people.
And really enabled a lot to happen and we want to take that
power of networking and extend it into space.
Okay, so let's start this off the right way with some
questions from the audience.
We're taking your questions live in the comments section so
please be sure to leave them below.
Ashley wants to know: How do missions currently get their
data back to Earth?
Okay, so missions that are flying now either can send their
data directly to a ground station - those places on Earth
with big antennas - or in the case of the International Space
Station, they can transmit up to relay satellites, so here's a
Tracking and Data Relay satellite in geosynchronous
orbit, that then will receive the data from the space station
on this high gain antenna in this case and then it has
another antenna that will transmit the signal back down to
White Sands, New Mexico, where we have ground station.
And from White Sands, New Mexico, then that's how the data
will then get sent to where it's supposed to go.
But the way we do things today uh - is very scheduled and
preplanned.
So, for example, if two weeks ago or more than two weeks ago
you had to call somebody up and say well on Monday - Cyber
Monday - I want to get up in the morning and first thing in the
morning I want to check on how the football game went and want
to check my email, and then at lunch time that day I want to go
and shop for something, I got to get something for my son, gotta
get something for my wife.
And then at 3 o'clock I'm going to be on Facebook Live and you
had to know exactly when you were going to do it, how much
data was transfer and where you were going to transfer to, then
uh that is analogous to exactly how we operate our missions
today.
So it works, but it's not very very scalable.
Okay, so what is Disruption Tolerant Networking and how does
that come into play?
Okay, so, Disruption Tolerant Networking will give us the
advantages of networking but in our space environment.
So, so, here we see a picture illustrating the solar system,
so you see the separation of all the planets.
So, first there's the delay.
There's the great distances our communications travel at the
speed of light, which is fast, but if you were at Mars it would
take 20 minutes uh - to communicate from Earth to Mars,
so to say "hello" and somebody at Mars to say "hello" back
would take 40 minutes round trip.
So, you have that delay.
You don't really want to be communicating in a way that
requires a lot of back-and-forth.
Then we have disruptions from the physical complications of
communicating from space, but also just from our ability to to
make contact.
Here we see a whole bunch of low Earth orbiting satellites.
So, they're orbiting.
You see Earth science missions that are orbiting in a polar
orbit.
When they go over the Antarctica region we have a ground station
in Mcmurdo that can pick up the spacecraft and collect the data.
But the spacecraft might only be in view for eight minutes out of
this whole orbit that takes 90 minutes.
So we get disruptions between the time of when the spacecraft
gathers the data and when it finally has the chance to
communicate.
So, what we have illustrated here are two cases The top is
the current terrestrial Internet style way of communicating and
the bottom is DTN.
So these are two communications paths you see the source on the
left and here's the receiver on the right hand side.
And along this path we have these links between multiple
hops.
And in the case with the IP connection - Internet Protocol
style connection - then if the path is not completely connected
all the way through then the data get dropped and it gets
lost.
In the bottom case where we're using Disruption Tolerant
Networking, see we have the storage at each one of these
nodes along the way.
So, as long as any of the links is available then the data can
go that next hop down, get in storage and when the link
becomes available then the data goes along the way, with the end
result being that we get more data that makes it to the final
destination in the case where we could just take advantage of
each hop then you do in the top case.
So, for those of you just joining us we're talking to you
live today about Disruption Tolerant Networking and how
that's going to enable a solar system wide Internet.
This is - like I said this is a technology that we'll need to be
able to build this solar system wide Internet.
Dave, can you help break that down a little bit more.
Uh - in the spirit of Cyber Monday, we actually have some
packages if you will of data over here.
Can you show me a little bit about how Disruption Tolerant
Networking works?
Okay, so I have there packets of data here and as long as we're
connected then I can just keep passing the data to you and as
long you're there listening and able to receive it at the rate
that I'm passing it to you then everything is fine.
But if I start to send more than you can keep up with or if
you're not paying attention or you're looking at somewhere else
then we get dropped packets.
So the way that we can deal with dropped packets in the DTN sense
is that we put storage in between.
So, here we have the storage.
So now, whether or not you're paying attention or able to
collect to data, then the data packets still make it into
storage.
Or if we have the case where I have the ability to send a lot
of data at once, faster than you can pull it out, then I can put
it all into this intermediate node and then it works its way
down the line.
So, DTN is the same capability, except with multiple hops along
the way and to do it all on an automated fashion.
Okay, so this is kind of like being able to actually have a
mailbox in space, if you will.
I don't necessarily have to be there to sign for my packages as
they come in pretty much.
That's right.
So, for those of you just joining us, we're coming to you
live here on Cyber Monday talking to you a little bit more
about Disruption Tolerant Networking and how that's going
to enable uh - a solar system wide Internet.
We're taking your questions live so be sure to leave them in the
comments below We've our first question here from Sandy.
Sandy wants to know: Cyber is already in space isn't it?
Isn't that how the whole entire space station is run?
So, we do have uh computers and digital communications in space
and the space station is an example of something that does
have on board networks at the time.
But, the way that things are currently operated with very
small exception, is that it is all pre planned and pre scripted
So, we can get the data from where it originates to where we
want it to go, but it requires a lot more people involved and
planning then what you're Internet connection currently
has.
Okay, we have another question from Paula, she wants to know
when will this be operational?
When will Disruption Tolerant Networking be operational?
So, it is operational already on board the International Space
Station, as of last year.
Previously to that we've done various demonstrations.
So, we did demonstrations from deep space on the Deep Impact
Mission and also from some Earth science missions as a
demonstration and also through laser comm links to and from the
Moon as a demonstration.
But our first operational case is from the space station, on
that same link relayed through TDRS and back down to Earth we
actually are using DTN now and it's in place to provide science
payloads that are on the space station to be able to get their
data back.
So, besides the International Space Station has Disruption
Tolerant been used on any other NASA spacecraft?
So, we did those previous demonstrations and we have more
that are planned to launch.
But, but, besides demonstrations the only current operational
case is our space station.
Okay, so, let's take a couple more questions from the
audience.
Ian wants to know: How do you handle encryption with this?
Okay, so encryption can happen at different layers and security
is always a concern.
DTN has a protocol that is called the bundle protocol,
which is really what we were enacting, the bundles of data.
So, one thing that we can do is that we can encrypt the bundles
themselves.
So this would be if somebody actually got into your package
but still wouldn't be able to read it.
But then you can also do encryption at some of the lower
layers that provide that security.
For those of you just joining us, we're talking to you live
today about building an interplanetary Internet and a
technology called Disruption Tolerant Networking, also known
to us as DTN, and how that's going to help build that
Internet.
Uh - we're taking your questions live today, so please be sure to
leave the comments below and we'll get to them.
Dave, you recently tested this technology out from an extremely
remote place.
You tested it out from Antarctica.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
So here's our crew in Antarctica and they're all been bundled up
in two different ways.
So the first way, you see they're dressed for the weather.
We have the Mcmurdo TDRS relay system at Mcmurdo ground station
down there and this is Mark, Peter and Salem that are down
there to do upgrades.
You see Peter is holding a picture of Vint Cerf - one of
the fathers of the Internet - who's also one of our primary
people working on Disruption Tolerant Networking.
He was supposed to be Antarctica, but wasn't able to
make the trip.
But, his picture was able to make this trip in the photo
bundles that started from the cell phone - Salem here took the
selfie and then from Antarctica then the cell phone generated
the bundles and then we started this journey across the multiple
hops.
So what you see here on the left here is the Antarctica selfie,
and then we had when the camera was in range of a Wifi network
at McMurdo Station then the bundles were able to stop at a
node at our McMurdo TDRS relay system.
When the TDRS link became available, that's our
communications satellite link became available, to McMurdo
then the bundle made its way to our ground station at White
Sands, New Mexico.
From White Sands, New Mexico, the bundles worked themselves to
Marshall Space Flight Center, which is where there's the
network access point to then work it into the TDRS link that
landed on the space station and then allowed us to deliver the
picture.
So what you see here is an astronaut flying into the
picture, which helps to prove this is on the space station
itself.
So the bundle landed on the space station.
There's a payload there called the TReK system that when it
received the bundle it was able to extract the photo and then
display the photo on this laptop here on board the space station.
Is this the only way that NASA's utilizing - uh - Antarctica for
space communications?
Are we utilizing it in another way?
Yeah, so Antarctica - remember that earlier picture with LEO
spacecraft that were flying over the poles.
Being located near either one of the poles gives you a great
location to put a ground station to receive data when those
missions fly over.
So, we have our own McMurdo ground station that can receive
the data as the missions fly over and then we have this
system that we call the McMurdo TDRS relay system which allows
us to get our spacecraft data out of McMurdo and back to the
continental U.S.
and to distribute the data.
But, also at the South Pole the National Science Foundation uses
the NASA system to do a South Pole TDRS Relay, where we're
able to move a lot of science data from the South Pole and
also to provide Internet connectivity for the National
Science Foundation at the South Pole, through our systems.
That's really awesome.
So, for those of you just joining us, we're coming to you
live here on Cyber Monday to talk to you a little bit about
building an interplanetary Internet and the technology that
is going to enable that.
A technology known to us as Disruption Tolerant Networking.
We're taking your questions live, so please be sure to leave
them in the comments.
We've got a couple questions here - uh - Dave, Brett wants to
know: Will we be able to Skype people on Mars using this, if
they colonize Mars?
So, you won't exactly be able to Skype.
And there the biggest problem would just be the delay.
So it would be more like sending video messages back-and-forth
because you'll have your video of yourself that you'll try to
send the message out and it may take 10-20 minutes until they
receive it on the other side.
So, it would be so much delay back-and-forth between the two
individuals having the conversation that it would be
much better to have a video message that you send along and
then they'll see it and send a video messages back.
Alright, so our next question comes from Neil.
He wants to know: Will Disruption Tolerant Networking
be limited to space to Earth and back communications or will it
be used in everyday life?
So, we're actually looking towards every day life.
There's an activity within the IETF - the Internet Engineering
Task Force - which is moving - that's the same body that has
all the standards that control the Internet now.
So under this case um - there's commercial interest and
terrestrial reasons that people are also pursuing DTN.
And where it can really come in handy are for things like remote
sites that can't have complete, continuous coverage or
connectivity to the Internet.
Or in situations where there's some sort of natural disaster or
something that provides a spotty or intermittent connectivity.
Okay, and then our next question that we've got - just a reminder
folks we are taking your questions live here so please be
sure to leave them in the comments below.
Our next question comes from Gregoria.
He wants to know if Disruption Tolerant Networking is based on
Internet Protocol technology?
So, it started with just taking the advantages that we've seen
of the Internet Protocol - and that's how Vint Cerf became
involved - but because of the challenges that are scenarios
for space users so much different than what the Internet
was designed for.
So, again the IP technology requires these hops along the
way to have the ability to send the - uh - messages
back-and-forth with short delays and also for that sender and the
receiver to be connected at the same time all the way through if
you wanted to send a message.
So, DTN got its start by as the Internet was taking off and we
were looking at 'Hey, this Internet stuff is great how do
use this for our space missions,' then we started to
identify the challenges that space missions face and had to
start to develop these new protocols that actually in
conjunction and in same cases over top of the existing
Internet protocol.
So, our next question comes from Kyle.
He wants to know: Do you have to wait for a satellite to be in
the right spot for this?
If so, how will this be faster?
Okay, so, the satellite has to be in the right spot in order
for the link to happen - for that communications link to
happen - but how this makes the communications faster is that
the satellite can transmit its data when it comes into view of
its next hop.
Either it gets time on the relay or the Earth is in view or the
ground station is in view.
And then whether or not anything else is available further down
the line won't effect the scheduling of that particular
satellite's link.
So, it can just get the data further down the line anytime
the link is available and all of the successive hops are able to
take advantage of the same thing, which is how that earlier
graphic was demonstrating the files starting to pile up faster
on the right hand side.
Okay.
Just a reminder we are here on Cyber Monday talking to you live
about Disruption Tolerant Networking and how that's going
to enable an interplanetary Internet and make communicating
with satellites, anywhere in the solar system, a lot more
reliable.
We are taking your questions live so please be sure to leave
them in the comments below.
Our next question comes from Paul.
He wants know: Won't we have large servers on other planets
to make this work?
So, yes - we hope so!
But what we really need is the network to connect all these
large servers together and for everything to connect with each
other.
What's really been enabling all the things we've been
experiencing on Earth with the Cloud and systems being able to
exchange data is the power of networking that allows anything
that's connected to the network to be able to exchange
information with anything else that's connected to the
networking, including servers.
And, because we're hoping that some of these servers are going
to be on other planets, we need to have some interplanetary
Internet kind of thing in order to make that happen.
So, next question.
We currently have rovers that are on Mars right now, right?
Right.
How can a technology like Disruption Tolerant Networking
benefit those rovers on Mars?
Okay, so the rovers that are currently on Mars are sending
their data in the same store and forward manner.
They're on the surface of Mars, an orbiter is in place or flies
overhead and the rover is able to transmit its data to the
orbiter, the orbiter gets time on the Deep Space Network and
then it sends the data down.
So it's fundamentally the same thing.
The change that we're describing here and that we're putting into
place is to make it so that it happens in an automated fashion
and it doesn't require all that pre planning and scheduling in
order to make it work.
So right now when we have this limited number of orbiters and
rovers then it takes quite a bit of work, but it is achievable.
As things scale up the way that we hope they do in the future,
it really wouldn't be possible without being able to automate
these things.
Okay, so you mentioned the Deep Space Network.
NASA, I know, has a couple of different space communications
networks.
Can you talk a little bit about them?
And how does - how will Disruption Tolerant Networking
help those networks out?
Sure, so there's the Space Network which is the TDRS - uh
so here you see the TDRS satellites.
So these are those relay satellites that we saw in the
earlier video.
So, Disruption Tolerant Networking would help in this
case because the missions will not - do not always have full
time access to the TDRS links.
So they would be able to store the data and then when they have
the link, then they could relay it through the TDRS.
And then that Mcmurdo ground station that I mentioned is a
station that is part of our Near Earth Network.
Now one of the other things that happened to us is a mission
could get a short period of time to send its data either through
the relay or to the Earth and they'll send the data at a
really high rate.
But the scientist doesn't necessarily need that data in
real time.
So, DTN allows us, just like that box, allows us to hold the
data fill it up fast from the spacecraft and then pull it out
at the slower rate.
Okay, so funny that you mentioned the box.
I'm actually getting a request also to try and do our little
demonstration that we did earlier over again.
So, you want to go ahead and do that again?
Sure.
We made a mess here guys.
We've got a bunch of envelopes - in the spirit of Cyber Monday
we're here talking to you live about building a solar system
wide Internet and the technology that's going to enable that is
Disruption Tolerant Networking.
We did a demonstration earlier, we're going to do it over again
about how the technology works, just breaking it down a little
bit further for folks.
So, Dave you have a stack of envelopes other there, basically
packages of data, essentially.
And I believe you're going to start handing me some of those.
Okay, so I'm trying to send this data to Amber and we can just
think of this as maybe there's multiple hops in-between, but
they're all connected at the same time.
So, as the source of the data I can just send it to Amber and as
long she is able to take them and the speed I am handing them
to her and we have the connection and she's paying
attention then everything goes fine.
But, if I start passing them to her at a rate faster, or she's
not paying attention then we have dropped packets or data
loss.
So, where the box came in is that the box is this storage at
each of these intermediate hops along the way so now, no matter
what Amber is doing as long as I'm in the view of the box then
I can just pass the data in at whatever pace I want to.
And then when the path - the link - to Amber becomes
available then she just pulls the data out at her convenience.
Okay, so we're talking to you live here on Cyber Monday about
Disruption Tolerant Networking and how that's going to help us
build an interplanetary Internet.
We're taking your questions live, so please be sure to leave
them in the comments below.
We've got a question from Dia.
She wants to know: Will this help create a better tracking
system?
It will, in that it will enable us to uh - again in a more
automated fashion and automation in general leads to more
efficiency.
Which from - and I'm interpreting the question - as
tracking system as our data communications system that it
will enable us to be able to fully make the most of every
pass that a satellite has.
So when it comes into view then we can get as much data as
possible during every contact that satellite or spacecraft may
have.
Okay, alright.
So, it sounds like Disruption Tolerant Networking is going to
be something that's going to be really great for our different
space missions.
Does it have any benefits for here on Earth?
Yes, it does.
So, we saw the example from Antarctica.
So we actually are looking at this technology and working with
the National Science Foundation for these types of remote field
science expeditions where a scientist may go out into the
field and be collecting data, but they're collecting data that
maybe they want to send back to their university or to wherever,
but they don't have network connection at that time.
So, they can collect the data, start it on its way and then
once they get back into view of the network or they get network
connectivity then the data can move along to that next hop.
The same situation could apply in a case where there is some
natural disaster or something happened.
Maybe it was a place that had great network connectivity, but
now it doesn't and DTN could be used to maximize the use of
whatever limited infastructure is there.
Okay, so if you're just joining us we're coming to you live from
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland,
talking to you a little bit today about building an
interplanetary Internet and the technology that's going to
enable that, something called Disruption Tolerant Networking.
And it's going to make communicating with satellites
wherever they might be in the solar system definitely more
reliable.
We have a couple of questions that - we're taking questions
live right now so be sure to leave your questions in the
comments - but we've got a question here.
Danny wants to know: What future missions will this technology be
used on?
Okay, so near term there is going to be the CubeSat with the
name of Lunar IceCube.
That's going to launch with the EM1 Orion mission, that's going
to be using DTN.
There's a demonstration on a Korean Pathfinder mission that's
scheduled to launch.
And then there's other missions that we've been working on, but
it is too soon to sort of announce.
We're planning to put it into our exploration missions and our
future science missions.
We have another question from Adam.
He wants to know: How much on board storage does this require
and how do you budget for it?
That's a good question.
So the amount of storage required is really situation
dependent.
So what needs to be worked out is this understanding of how
fast is the data going to be coming in?
How soon will you be able to get rid of it?
And then you need to have enough storage so that you don't lose
the data.
One way I like to imagine it is if you had one of those cases
where you had like a bucket with a spout on the bottom that lets
the water out at a certain rate and then you have water pouring
into the top then it's based on the rates of those two
connections how big of a bucket you need so that none of the
water spills out.
It's that kind of problem.
We have another question that's coming from Kyle.
He wants to know: Will this help with GPS and being able to find
things better?
Probably not directly with GPS.
The ability of position knowledge is something that
would kind of help with the planning and scheduling.
DTN itself does not directly impact GPS.
So we have time for one more question.
The question is: What is NASA vision for the future of this
technology?
Okay, so our plan is as we start to continue our exploration
missions and expand out into cases where now there's more
commercial applications and international partners is to
build out this interplanetary Internet, this solar system
Internet.
And the way we would do that is to have future missions launch
with the software and the storage and the standards in
place so that we will slowly be building out this networking
piece by piece and mission by mission.
Thank you so much for joining us here today to talk to us a
little bit about space communications and Disruption
Tolerant Networking.
So you know, this technology Disruption Tolerant Networking,
it's not just an effort being done at Goddard.
It's a partnership between two different NASA programs - NASA's
Space Communications and Navigation as well as NASA's
Advanced Exploration Systems with multiple field centers
across the country participating as well as multiple domestic and
international partners.
If you want to learn more about Disruption Tolerant Networking
we want you to go visit our website: www.
nasa.gov/content/dtn If you go visit there you can learn all
about Disruption Tolerant Networking.
Thank you so much for joining us today and have a happy Cyber
Monday!
Bye.