Patrick Romano

Developments towards an Interplanetary Internet

A major effort in current developments for future space missions is the improvement of communications capabilities. With increasing interest in space research and long-term exploration programs including a variety of both near Earth and deep space missions of the major space agencies, communications faces additional challenges. Next-generation communication systems must be able to cope with long-distance communication links, supporting disruption-tolerant networking (DTN), implementing efficient store-and-forward strategies for data download, and providing interoperability between missions. Therefore, innovative concepts for the creation of an Interplanetary Internet (IPN) are currently under investigation. The Interplanetary Internet Special Interest Group (IPNSIG) has already elaborated a suitable IPN network architecture and identified key research areas. Since the main challenges for IPN are efficient data transport strategies, current research activities are focused on the transport layer. However, in order to achieve these goals, improvements at all OSI layers are necessary. The presented paper deals with future developments required for the establishment of an Interplanetary Internet. After introducing an IPN network architecture proposed by [1], the suitability of terrestrial Internet and existing space communications standards for IPN is analyzed. Current protocol developments for IPN are introduced and compared with the previously investigated standards. Finally, future IPN developments are presented. This analysis focuses on all OSI layers, providing a set of recommendations for the improvement of existing technologies and proposing some innovative concepts and solutions.

Nanosatellites—the BRITE and OPS-SAT missions

Nanosatellites are spacecraft in the mass range between 1 and 10 kg providing a fast and low-cost possibility to test new technology in Space and gain flight heritage. The first Austrian nanosatellite TUGSAT-1/BRITE-Austria, successfully launched in 2013, and a follow-up ESA mission are described in this paper.ZusammenfassungNanosatelliten sind Weltraumobjekte mit einer Masse zwischen 1 und 10 kg. Sie bieten eine rasche und kostengünstige Möglichkeit, neue Technologien im Weltraum zu erproben und Flugerfahrung zu sammeln. Der erste österreichische Satellit TUGSAT-1/BRITE-Austria, der erfolgreich 2013 gestartet wurde, und eine Nachfolgemission der ESA werden in diesem Artikel beschrieben.

Generic communication user and system requirements for future space science missions

Since space missions have been flown, a proper data return to Earth was inherently required. The complexity level and the number of space experiments have increased over the last decades. As a consequence, higher data rates have been required. The most limiting factor on achievable data rates for interplanetary communications is the distance. It imposes challenges on all parts of the communication system. Communication user and system requirements must be carefully defined to fulfill the mission needs. These requirements are expected to increase in the future. Hence, we studied 13 generic future ESA space mission scenarios comprising 5 Lunar missions, 5 Mars missions, and three missions to special targets (Lagrange point L2, NEO, and the Jovian satellite Europa) based on planned and already flown missions in order to derive communication user and system requirements. These requirements were classified, scaled, adapted and validated by calculations for these missions defined in [1]. Within this paper we will present how communication user and system requirements for future space science missions can be classified, scaled and applied. Therefore, after introducing a proper classification of communication requirements we will present recommendations by means of concrete examples assuming an Asteroid Sample Return mission scenario. Some practical hints will be provided as well.