Vint Cerf co creator of the Internet and a Google vice president says he is designing new protocols for a strong space-communication network, modeled on the Internet here on Earth. The Internet guru is reaching for the moon, he thinks it’s about time a proper working communication system was launched into space, ridding the space exploration industry of costly, non-reusable point-to-point radio links, which inhibit interoperability and which have to be made specifically for every mission. The primary difficulties in building such a network include distance-induced delays and the rotation of the planets, causing disruption in communication lines.

To deal with these issues, Cerf says the project is developing a delay- and disruption-tolerant networking system [DTN] that uses store-and-forward methods - routing data through hosts, which store it until communications can be established - similar to TCP/IP in design. The project is not without security concerns, however, and Cerf notes great pains were taken to build defenses into the basic design so that each bundle-aware node would be able to identify any other nodes it is communicating to or from.

In the future, Cerf reckons that the network could even link manned and robotic spacecraft to form the basis of a galaxy-wide communications system.

Via