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{
    "url": "https://mailman.amsat.org/hyperkitty/api/list/[email protected]/email/HL7QAHF4GGA45U7CZCBPUKF32AV5NBDS/",
    "mailinglist": "https://mailman.amsat.org/hyperkitty/api/list/[email protected]/",
    "message_id": "[email protected]",
    "message_id_hash": "HL7QAHF4GGA45U7CZCBPUKF32AV5NBDS",
    "thread": "https://mailman.amsat.org/hyperkitty/api/list/[email protected]/thread/HL7QAHF4GGA45U7CZCBPUKF32AV5NBDS/",
    "sender": {
        "address": "h05ram-k9ldw (a) usa.net",
        "mailman_id": null,
        "emails": null
    },
    "sender_name": "[email protected]",
    "subject": "[amsat-bb] NASA plans improved ‘Internet in space’ - references SDR's",
    "date": "2009-03-16T16:22:18Z",
    "parent": null,
    "children": [],
    "votes": {
        "likes": 0,
        "dislikes": 0,
        "status": "neutral"
    },
    "content": "NASA plans improved ‘Internet in space’\n\n    * By Sean Gallagher\n    * Mar 09, 2009\n\nNASA’s Deep Space Network is on the way toward becoming a true Internet in\nspace, thanks to the agency’s research and investment in software-defined\nradios (SDRs). Also, the agency is preparing an SDR test module for the\nInternational Space Station that will \nbe capable of connecting the station with an uplink of 100 megabits per\nsecond.\n\nPat Elben, the chairman of NASA’s software defined radio architecture and\ntechnology team (SAT) at NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation\ndirectorate, told attendees at the IDGA’s Software Radio Summit that the\nagency is setting up a new test platform. \nThe platform, named the Communication Navigation and Networking Reconfigurable\nTestbed (CoNNeCT) will help NASA test waveforms based on the agency's Space\nTelecommunications Radio System (STRS), NASA's own standard for space-rated\nsoftware-defined radio systems.\n\nCoNNeCT will be added to the International Space Station in 2011, and\ndemonstrate communications between the space station and the Tracking and Data\nRelay Satellite constellation that makes up the backbone of NASA’s network\nwith three radio systems -- the Electra radio that flew aboard MRO, the\nGeneral Dynamics Starlight radio, and the Orion radio -- the system being\ndesigned for NASA's follow-on to the space shuttle.\n\nNASA developed its own standard because of the demanding requirements of\nspace, where reprogramming a radio often has to be done remotely while the\nradio is on a spacecraft traveling through the solar system.\n\nThat was the case, Elben said, when the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) was\nlaunched. Technicians discovered the Electra radio aboard MRO, a\nsoftware-defined radio that was to act as the communications link to the two\nMars rovers on the surface, was getting interfered with by something else on\nthe spacecraft just before launch. NASA was able to launch the MRO and create\na software patch and upload it to the Electra radios aboard it while the\nspacecraft was en route to Mars, he said.\n\nSome observers have expressed concerns that suppliers might be reluctant to\nwrite software to yet another SDR architecture — the Defense Department’s\nJoint Tactical Radio System uses the Software Communications Architecture,\nwhich has been adopted by the Software Defined Radio Forum along with its own\nSW Radio standard. Elben said NASA plans on buying more than 1,000 STRS-based\nradios between now and 2025, but the price of these radios — between $1\nmillion and $5 million — makes STRS radios a potentially $1 billion market\nfor radio developers.\n\nAlthough NASA has deployed software-defined radios for years, starting with\nthe “Blackjack” global positioning system receiver on spacecraft in 2000,\nSTRS will be part of the basis of an ambitious revamp of the agency’s Deep\nSpace Network. The re-engineering will be based on SDRs and on high-bandwidth\noptical links, Elben said. It will also entail the use of software-defined\nsystems and a move to less-expensive arrays of dish antennas instead of the\nold larger dishes. The new approaches are expected to make the network more\nautomated and less expensive.\n\nIn the 1960s when NASA first created what became its Deep Space Network,\n“there was no grand vision,” Elben said. “NASA’s goal for 2024 is a\nhighly integrated, IP-based disruption resistant network.”\n\nLast November, NASA successfully tested Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN),\nan Internet Protocol-based network using store-and-forward technology to\nensure that packets of data would not be lost when being passed through the\nDeep Space Network. The agency will begin testing DTN aboard the International\nSpace Station this summer.\n\nSource:\nhttp://gcn.com/articles/2009/03/09/nasa-software-radios.aspx?s=gcndaily_160309\n\n###\n\n\n\n",
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}