To boldly go!

Is this to be the ‘outernet’ as opposed to the ‘internet’? NASA has announced that it has successfully conducted an early test of a deep space communications network modeled on the Internet. NASA along with engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory used software called Disruption-Tolerant Networking, or DTN, to transmit images to and from a spacecraft some 32.4 million kilometers from Earth. NASA said the software protocol, which must be able to withstand delays, disruptions and disconnections in space, was designed in partnership with Google. DTN sends information using a method that differs from the normal Internet's Transmission-Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, communication suite. Unlike TCP/IP, DTN does not assume a continuous end-to-end connection, due to the disruptions that can happen when a spacecraft moves behind a planet, or when solar storms and long communication delays occur. It said the delay, for example, in sending or receiving data from Mars takes between three-and-a-half minutes and 20 minutes at the speed of light. NASA said that if a destination path cannot be found, data packets are not discarded but kept by each network node until it can communicate safely with another node. NASA said engineers had begun a month-long series of DTN demonstrations in October using NASA's Epoxi spacecraft, which is on a mission to encounter Comet Hartley 2 in two years, as a Mars data-relay orbiter. It said there are 10 nodes in the early interplanetary network - the Epoxi spacecraft itself and nine on the ground at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory simulating Mars landers, orbiters and ground mission-operations centers. NASA said a test of DTN software loaded on board the International Space Station would begin next summer. It said an 'Interplanetary Internet’ could enable many new types of space missions including complex flights involving multiple spacecraft and ensure reliable communications for astronauts on the Moon.