Extending Earth's Internet to Mars With Orbital Data Servers
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Extending Earth's Internet to Mars With Orbital Data Servers:
You've done it. After years of effort and training, sacrifice, and pain, you become an astronaut and have finally set foot on Mars. Time to post your triumph on TikTok for that sweet social media cred. If only you can get a signal.
While that might seem like a silly scenario, the need for internet connectivity on Mars is real. It's not just a matter of allowing astronauts to doomscroll and post on Reddit. Landing humans on Mars will require a tremendous amount of data transfer with Earth, which is not easy. So how can we create an information network on Mars that is robust enough for both logistic and personal needs? A paper posted on the arxiv proposes an idea.
[...] One of these ideas, as the paper outlines, is edge computing. Although you probably don't notice it, edge computing is why you can watch streaming services like Netflix and Disney+. It takes a tremendous amount of bandwidth to stream television and movies, so streaming services distribute their servers to get you better speeds. [...]
This latest work looks at what it would take to have an edge computing network around Mars. The key is not only to have data locally accessible, but also to have a certain level of redundancy. So they propose building a constellation of satellites around Mars. Their system would have 9 satellites each in 9 orbital planes, for a total of 81 satellites. As with many constellations, the satellites would communicate with each other to have redundant backups of data. This means various landing sites on Mars would be able to communicate with 2 or 3 satellites at any given time. For extended missions, ground-based servers could be used for even faster data retrieval.
Building such a system would not be cheap, so the authors propose building the constellation in stages. As exploratory missions to Mars lay the groundwork for crewed landing, a few constellation satellites could go along for the ride. By the time long-term stations are being built, the constellation could already be in place.
Journal Reference:
Pfandzelter, Tobias, and David Bermbach. "Can Orbital Servers Provide Mars-Wide Edge Computing?" arXiv preprint arXiv:2306.09756 (2023).
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