There is massive preparation going on for the future human exploration of Mars. For internet services, they are working in many ways. Sending information from Earth to Mars required several amounts of data transfer.
As NASA’s next mission on Mars is underway, so they are ardently working on the interplanetary internet connection. For future internet connectivity on Mars, it required a massive amount of data to be transferred which is not easy. So how can we create an information network on Mars that is robust enough for both logistic and personal needs?
On International Space Station already have web access they often complain about its dial-up level speeds. In space, connections are settled through radio waves.
Currently Deep Sky Network is giving services of internet on the space.
What is Deep Sky Network?
The deep sky network is NASA’s interplanetary internet service. It is actually a giant radio antennas networks that support the data transfer to NASA’s spacecraft missions and satellites that orbit the Earth.
The Deep space network also provides radar and radio astronomy observations that improve our understanding of the solar system and the larger universe.
What are the Challenges are There for Providing Data Services to Mars
The main challenge is the bandwidth, simply you can’t lay fibers from Earth to Mars. Currently, for space data connections astronauts depend on the large array of radio antennas that are spread across the globe called deep sky network. But as far as we know deep sky network has its own limits and astronauts require new ideas.
Edge Computing is the New Revolutionary path in the New Era of Space
Edge computing as the name suggests user processes the data at the periphery of the network, through a large amount of data can be processed at greater speed and volumes.
If you notice that your Disney Hotstar is streaming very fast it is all because of the edge computing. The reason behind your channel streaming very fast is that they distributed their server closer to your location.
The same edge computing will apply on Mars. Their main focus is to provide data locally accessible on the red planet, but also available in redundancy. So they propose building a constellation of satellites around the red planet. Their system would have 9 satellites each in 9 orbital planes, for a total of 81 satellites. For data processing various landing sites on Mars will depend on those satellites and ground-based servers could be used for even faster data retrieval.
Building a constellation of satellites is not a cheap thing for NASA, they’ll build this caravan of satellites in stages. They will load these satellites on the rocket as they wanted to build a future colony of humans on Mars.
So hope you’ll enjoy the facilities of fast data on Mars in the upcoming future.