NARRATOR
A lunar scientist surveys a dusty crater near the Moon’s South Pole. She’s one of a new generation of astronauts establishing a sustained presence on the Moon as part of the Artemis missions. 92 million miles away, a solar flare erupts from the Sun, sending harsh radiation through the void, hurtling towards the astronaut at the speed of light.
She would be in danger, were it not for space communications.
You see – a spacecraft identified that spike in solar activity. That data flowed through NASA’s networks, quickly finding its way to the astronaut, warning her to seek shelter. The network kept her safe.
At NASA, we envision an interconnected solar system – a network that extends beyond Earth’s bounds, connecting space and Earth in an interplanetary internet and integrating systems into one seamless architecture. It’s a future just beyond the horizon, but made manifest daily by NASA communications engineers.
NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program — SCaN — is developing a bold new architecture for lunar communications. This concept — LunaNet — will empower NASA to explore the Moon and lay the foundation to support missions to Mars and beyond.
I’m Danny Baird. This is the Invisible Network.
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NARRATOR
Andrew Petro leads lunar communications and navigation architecture development and implementation for SCaN.
ANDREW PETRO
LunaNet is not a thing or a place. It’s a concept. It’s an abstract kind of concept. It’s a set of cooperating networks… based on a framework of mutually agreed upon standards, that would enable interoperability among different networks that might be supporting missions at and around the Moon…
It’s somewhat like — in concept — like the internet, you know, which is not a single thing, but… it’s a collection of things that work together. It’s not a thing in itself… it’s a collection of things and the framework that allows them to work together.
NARRATOR
While looking forward to the Artemis missions, Andrew looks back to Apollo for reference. Some communications capabilities remain the same. Many others will be new ones developed to support the unique needs of future lunar exploration.
ANDREW PETRO
We will continue to use the same types of ground stations, and radio systems that have been used all along to support missions to the Moon — and really anywhere. What will be different is that we want to ensure that interoperability — the idea that we can have different providers connected together…
And what will be really new and different for our lunar architecture is… the addition of relay capability at the Moon, which we didn’t really need in the Apollo program… We want to be able to provide more continuous service to missions wherever they are, whether that’s on the far side or the near side, or near the poles, which is a very interesting area to explore.
NARRATOR
Establishing a sustained presence at the Moon with the Artemis program, NASA and its partners will open more areas of the lunar surface for exploration than ever before. The Apollo missions were — in many ways — limited in scope. They visited a variety of sites on the near side, but Artemis will expand exploration opportunities to include much more of the lunar regime. Artemis’ consistent and sustained exploration of diverse lunar environments — largely enabled by commercial human landing systems and the Gateway, a planned international and commercial outpost in lunar orbit — will require more network resources.
ANDREW PETRO
You may not have direct contact everywhere… in the South Pole, or North Pole, or even on the limbs of the Moon. And so, having a relay capability is — sort of — the new and different thing that we’re building into the architecture. And again, underlying that architecture is the concept of LunaNet standards… so that we can have relays provided by U.S. commercial vendors… or companies from other countries, providing services. And a particular mission might make use of any one of them.
NARRATOR
The Artemis missions to the Moon will require resilient and reinforced capabilities to ensure success. The Gateway will be a cornerstone for these services, serving as a communication relay between the lunar surface and Earth or lunar spacecraft. It will be a foundational element of NASA’s lunar network architecture as the agency pursues additional partnerships with industry and academia to build out LunaNet.
Embracing commercial capabilities has been a hallmark of the last decade or so. Notably, the Commercial Crew Program is already sending crewed missions to the International Space Station aboard industry-owned and -operated spacecraft.
In the last episode of this podcast, we outlined the ways that SCaN is working with industry to develop a space communications marketplace that serves missions close to Earth. Similarly, the LunaNet concept will make it easy for companies to get involved in a lunar communications marketplace.
ANDREW PETRO
We’re planning to solicit private industry to provide those services and — of course — we’re doing that already with the Commercial Lunar Payload Services contracts… for private companies to carry NASA payloads to the Moon robotically. We’re doing [that] with the Human Landing System…
I think that the role of private industry in this is very important… We put out a request for information in October about this relay capability and we got a very big response. So, there’s a tremendous interest in it — in the United States and around the world, actually. So, I think a lot of people see this as a great new frontier, not just for exploration, but for commercial development. And I think that will be the story of the Moon.
NARRATOR
As NASA tells it, the story of the Moon is a prelude to the journey to Mars. The agency is using Artemis to advance the technologies and exploration approaches that will empower future missions to the Red Planet.
ANDREW PETRO
I see that same concept that we’re looking to create at the Moon expanded to Mars and to the solar system generally — connecting things together. We see how that kind of connection has affected the way we live on Earth, mostly in very positive ways… and we see that happening through the whole solar system as well.
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NARRATOR
LunaNet began its life at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The Exploration and Space Communications projects division — which implements SCaN’s vision at Goddard — presented early plans for the architecture in June of 2019, responding to a solicitation for communications and navigation concepts for small satellite constellations at the Moon. The LunaNet concept evolved from there.
DAVID ISRAEL
I’m Dave Israel, I am the chief architect for our division and my job is really to be looking at the long-term architecture, so the plans and the concepts of how we want to provide communications and navigation to missions in the future.
NARRATOR
And what is the LunaNet architecture? What makes it unique?
DAVID ISRAEL
Yes, so that’s actually an interesting question. And it’s been challenging to answer because if you ask somebody, “what is the internet?” You’ll get lots of different questions and different things. But overall, LunaNet is really the large network — or it’s really a network of networks. So, it’s the combination of things that would provide the connectivity and the services to the lunar missions.
NARRATOR
These networked assets could range from the spacecraft themselves, to dedicated lunar relay satellites, to ground stations on Earth. The power of LunaNet is that it can bring seemingly discreet infrastructure into a user-focused platform — just like the internet.
DAVID ISRAEL
The biggest part that makes it different is that we aren’t going into this focused on just an individual mission… We’re looking at this as a larger enterprise, where there’s multiple missions, multiple types of missions, multiple organizations that are all planning to go to the Moon. So, instead of designing an architecture and an infrastructure that’s very specific to one particular case, we’re looking from the beginning to set things up so that it’s scalable and can provide support ranging from the smallest sort of robotic mission or sensor on the surface of the Moon to — one day — the human base camp and large dwellings in operations on the Moon.
NARRATOR
And how does it work? How will LunaNet connect these assets?
DAVE ISRAEL
The idea is that each connection that a lunar user would have is a connection to the broader LunaNet… Once you’re connected to the LunaNet, then you can exchange data with anybody else connected to the LunaNet. So then that way, when there’s multiple missions and things on and around the Moon — or multiple entities on the Earth that are also interacting with the things on the Moon — then once you have your LunaNet connection, then you have the ability to communicate with anybody else that’s on the network. And it’s not so much about a single connection. It’s: you connect to the network, which then gives you that interconnectivity between all the different entities.
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NARRATOR
NASA is investigating many foundational LunaNet concepts through Goddard’s Technology Enterprise and Mission Pathfinder Office, or TEMPO, led by Chief Kendall Mauldin. They’re leveraging their subject matter expertise and experience with technology development to help create many of LunaNet’s operational capabilities.
KENDALL MAULDIN
Within TEMPO, we work with a lot of the newer up-and-coming technologies that are comm and nav related. We incubate those technologies, bringing them to maturity levels where then they can be infused into more operational systems. And we also incubate new projects, ideas, and even new project teams to get some of these ideas off the ground.
NARRATOR
TEMPO has been involved in the development of optical communications systems, which use infrared lasers not visible to the human eye to provide missions with higher data rates and reduced size, weight, and power requirements. They’re working on quantum networking, which can use quantum properties of communications signals to enhance network security. They’re also developing Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking protocols, or DTN, that will bring internetworking to space and serve as a backbone for LunaNet.
The network protocol that enables the terrestrial internet, Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP, relies on an uninterrupted connection for data transference. In space, missions can often have long delays, or latency, and disruptions due to orbital dynamics that make using TCP/IP challenging. DTN will make NASA’s networks flexible enough to overcome these issues.
For example, a transmission sent to Mars from Earth can take up to 20 minutes to arrive. Confirming receipt of the message takes another 20 minutes. Using conventional TCP/IP, missions would have to wait 40 minutes to confirm receipt of each piece of data before transmitting the next. With DTN, NASA can send multiple data bundles consecutively and confirm receipt of multiple bundles with one reply.
In another example of the system’s utility, a rover on Mars has a clear connection with a relay satellite, but the relay satellite doesn’t have a clear link to Earth. Using TCP/IP, the mission would need to wait until both links became available, but with DTN the rover can send bundles to the relay satellite and the relay can hold onto the data until it has a link home.
While the Moon is much closer than Mars, the benefits of DTN still apply. NASA is taking the power of internet innovation and extending it to space.
KENDALL MAULDIN
Really, the key with LunaNet is: it’s taking an approach very similar to how the internet and even mobile devices have evolved on Earth… LunaNet will be transformational — in a similar way — to how we do communications, navigation, and even local detection services around the Moon… So, it’s taking an internetworked approach, as opposed to some of the more traditional point-to-point links…
NARRATOR
Though LunaNet is being formulated and some elements are in flux, the team currently envisions four primary types of services offered through LunaNet:
KENDALL MAULDIN
The first one is known as communication services, which is sort of like what we think of with the traditional, you know, getting data from point A to point B, getting voice communications from the surface of the Moon to the mission operation center, for example — things of that nature. So, moving data around that’s routable — in a routable fashion — is communications services, over either a single node or multiple nodes, as the data makes its way from one point to another.
Then the second one is position, navigation, and timing services, which you can think of as similar to how we use GPS on the Earth today. The vision is that we have similar services around the Moon, to provide even surface navigation aspects, or even for orbital assets to know better understanding of their position and orientation, and even know how close they are to each other and in doing things like rendezvous…
The third one is the detection and information services. This is an interesting one… We basically take a look at if we have multiple assets around the Moon, how can we actually take advantage of those strategic locations of where these assets are to actually detect what might be science events, or even human exploration events, or things that we normally would not have a great perspective or view of if we didn’t have those assets in place. And so, the data from those observations or detections — you know, could be space weather, for example. A solar flare happens, and… LunaNet… could then help detect those solar events and even provide information back to Earth, or even provide warnings or alerts back to astronauts on the surface.
And then the fourth one is the science services. This is really — as the name suggests — looking at how can we actually gather meaningful science data and observations from the same communications spacecraft, or assets, or nodes, that can be then combined together and do things like data mining and data combinations to really further the science around the Moon.
NARRATOR
Though Kendall mentions four services, he notes that collaborating with industry could open up even more unique enhancements to the overall network.
KENDALL MAULDIN
So, the vision with LunaNet is that it is an open, scalable architecture, which really means that we really are counting on a very collaborative interaction with not just NASA but international and commercial entities to really help build out the infrastructure of LunaNet. So, it’s actually a really wonderful opportunity for industry — for example — to play a very strong role in the buildout of the LunaNet nodes, relays, even user services as part of the larger architecture…
I think one of the key benefits is it really allows for a breadth of different ideas and capabilities to come to the table, especially those that… may already exist that we may not be fully aware of, or things that can be brought together in a new way and integrated together as part of a larger system for the greater good. And so, commercial industry traditionally has really brought some wonderful capabilities to the table as they continue to partner… with government on some of these key activities and areas.
So we see that in a very similar way with regards to LunaNet.
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NARRATOR
For two days, beginning on August 2, 1972, a series of X-class flares erupted from the Sun. These solar flares disrupted radio communications and damaged orbiting robotic satellites. Fortunately, the solar storm occurred after the conclusion of Apollo 16 in April and before the launch of Apollo 17 in December of that year. Had the timing been different, astronauts could have been exposed to significantly elevated charged particle radiation levels.
LunaNet’s networking concept and innovative new capabilities like detection services will improve mission safety. As humanity ventures further into the unknown, internetworked assets provided by both government and commercial entities will assure that our astronauts have the data they need to safely explore while keeping connected with loved ones on Earth.
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NARRATOR
This season of “The Invisible Network” debuted in May of 2021. Our next season will focus on the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration and debut after the launch of the mission later this year.
The podcast is produced by the Space Communications and Navigation program, or SCaN, out of Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. Episodes were written and recorded by me, Danny Baird, with editorial support from Katherine Schauer. Our public affairs officers are Lora Bleacher of Goddard’s Office of Communications and Kathryn Hambleton of the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.
Special thanks to Barbara Adde, SCaN Policy and Strategic Communications director, Rob Garner, Goddard Digital Lead, and all those who have lent their time, talent and expertise to making “The Invisible Network” a reality. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. For transcripts of the episodes, visit NASA.gov/invisible. To learn more about the vital role that space communications plays in NASA’s mission, visit NASA.gov/SCaN. For more NASA podcast offerings, visit NASA.gov/podcasts.