PROJECT SUMMARY: Networks on the Edge of Forever: Meteor Burst Communication Networks on Mars

The power of networks has helped to reshape modern society. Besides inciting simple efficiencies amongst already performed tasks, these "ideas of the network" are enabling new generations of products and services. In terms of outer space exploration, the envisioned future may include continuous operating outposts and networks on other worlds supporting human and robotic activity. For these missions, enhancing or enabling telecommunication capabilities may be acquired through translating known terrestrial technologies to interplanetary use. Future concepts of these "space" networks involve the proliferation of more active nodes (spacecraft) throughout the solar system. Many factors have accounted for the upsurge in interplanetary network activity, strikingly seen by the use of ever-greater network resources such as NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN). Some pertinent drivers include transition to smaller and less expensive spacecraft (i.e. multiple Mars Pathfinder/Discovery class missions versus single Voyager-type spacecraft) and more international interest in interplanetary exploration (European Space Agency's Mars Express/Beagle 2, Japanese moon/Mars spacecraft). As these nodes grow the region of interplanetary space will eventually become more interconnected with transitions from lone, disparate missions to coordinated multi-year architectures. At that point terrestrial concepts of networks emerge as case studies to help find optimum architectures (i.e. the Interplanetary Internet). In addition, future exploration (i.e. sample return) and colonization scenarios will require new types of networks.

SEI performed a feasibility analysis for a communications architecture based upon reflection of ion trails from meteors in planetary atmospheres. Meteor Burst (MB) communication systems use meteoritic impacts on planetary atmospheres as short burst communication nodes. MB systems consist of semi-continuous, low bandwidth networks. These systems possess both long distance capability (hundred of kilometers) and have lower susceptibility to atmospheric perturbations. Translation of such a system beyond Earth requires an atmosphere; therefore Martian analogues of such a system are presented. Such systems could support planetary mobility (for humans and robots), emergency communications, and weather monitoring stations while minimizing the need for massive orbital telecommunication constellations. Meteor Communications Corporation (MCC), developers and patent holders of commercial terrestrial MB systems, were associated as technical partners for this study.

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