Google Planning an Interplanetary Internet System

Image Source: The Mars Millennium Project.

Popsci is reporting that Google is developing an Internet system that can be used between spacecraft (Hat tip: @swadeshine).  Popsci is picking up on an original interview with Google’s 'Chief Internet Evangelist,' Vint Cerf at Network World about the development of an extraterrestrial Internet:

Google wants to install “InterPlanetary internet protocols” (IP IP?) on spacecraft, using them as an interwoven network of new space-based communication nodes. ... Google realized as far back as 1998 that space-based Internet has problems that don’t face the traditional Internet design — speed-of-light communications are instant on Earth, but at interplanetary distances, that’s slow, and can cause problems. An interplantary network could help overcome these problems.

The approach uses delay-tolerant networking, or Bundle Protocol, as distinct from Internet Protocol. The International Space Station uses Bundle Protocol, which defines blocks of data as a bundle, each of which contains enough information to avoid processing interruptions even in a delay.

This year, Google wants to standardize the interplanetary protocols and make them available to all the space-faring countries. ... “Potentially every spacecraft launched from that time on will be interwoven from a communications point of view. But perhaps more important, when the spacecraft have finished their primary missions, if they are still functionally operable — they have power, computer, communications — they can become nodes in an interplanetary backbone.”

The concept of Interplanetary Internet is about a year old.  The Website of the Delay-Tolerant Networking Research Group (DTNRG), an open research group on this question, is here.