Blogs / 80beats

NASA engineers have finally tested an “interplanetary Internet” that could be crucial for future communications with rovers and astronauts exploring the moon, Mars, or other planets. NASA says the system would rely on probes and orbiters to serve as relay stations, or routers, to send communications around the solar system. The space agency has been working for 10 years on the project with Vint Cerf, one of the Internet’s key inventors and now chief Internet evangelist for Google [AP].

The protocols (the language computers use to speak to each other) used for our terrestrial Internet won’t work for deep space, because they assume that the network’s nodes will be connected continuously, and that messages will travel swiftly. But communication between objects in space are frequently disrupted by solar storms and obstructing planets, and sending a message from Earth to Mars can take up to 20 minutes. So engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked with Cerf to come up with a new protocol, called Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN).

With the new communications design, each network node is designed to hold onto data packets, instead of discard them, until a destination path can be found. “The incentive to use Internet-like protocols over space links was to take advantage of automated routing,” [said NASA’s Leigh Torgerson]. “With standard space-link communications, the ground sends commands to spacecraft to tell it what time and what data to send. It’s very hands-on-intensive” [Computerworld].

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One of the teams competing for the $20 million top prize in the Google Lunar X Prize has announced its plans for an ambitious series of moon missions, beginning with a proposed trip to the historic Apollo 11 landing site. The team, Astrobotic Technology Inc., wants to send a rover to Tranquility Base in May 2010 to see how the relics left behind by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin have weathered over the 40 years.

The proposal has sparked a debate over whether new rovers can be trusted to not disturb the hallowed ground. Astrobotic Tech says its rover will land far from the Apollo 11 site and will be able to recognize and circumvent footprints and artifacts on the lunar surface, but not everyone shares this optimism. [Space policy expert] John Logsdon … believes the team should first perform trial runs on Earth. “I’d like to see them demonstrate their ability to do a precision landing someplace else before they try it next to the Apollo 11 site,” Logsdon says. “You wouldn’t have to be very far off to come down on top of the flag or something dramatic like that” [Seed].

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Google and General Electric have announced a partnership aimed at upgrading the United States electric power grid and pushing forward the development of renewable energy. The companies plan to conduct a joint lobbying effort in Washington to encourage the government to invest in developing a “smart grid,” and will also work together on projects like geothermal energy systems and integrating plug-in electric cars into the grid. The deal combines each company’s strengths: GE will make the hardware — from wind turbines to metering switches, and Google will make the software — applying network technologies to the grid [Portfolio].

The announcement follows a speech given two weeks ago by Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in which he laid out a blueprint for how the United States could switch over to generating 100 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030, while also eliminating half of the gasoline-powered cars from the roads. While Google hasn’t offered to follow through on that comprehensive proposal, which carried the hefty price tag of $2.7 billion, the partnership with GE seems to indicate that Google wants to put many of its suggestions into practice.

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Google has backed a venture to use satellites to bring high-speed Internet to three billion people in Africa and other developing markets around the equator. Today Google announced a partnership with cable operator Liberty Global and bank HSBC. Their partnership is called O3b Networks—O3b stands for “other 3 billion,” a reference to the world’s population that still can’t access the Internet [The New York Times].

The group announced an order for 16 satellites as the first stage in the $750 million project, which will provide cheap, fast Internet access to companies that sell internet service via mobile phones or wireless networks. The move is being greeted as a clever technological solution, a boon for the developing world, and a smart business move. “Google has an interest in boosting the Internet all over the world to reach new masses,” said [business analyst] Wim Zwanenburg…. “The growth market for Internet and mobile phones is in emerging countries” [Bloomberg].

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Cattle and deer grazing in fields tend to align themselves with the Earth’s magnetic field, suggesting that the animals may have a built-in magnetic compass. A new study shows that animals in these herds tend to face towards either magnetic north or south, which has come as a surprise even to those who spend their days with bovines. Asked whether he had ever observed such behavior in cows, dairy farmer Rob Fletcher of Tulare, Calif., said, “Absolutely not.” But, he added, “I don’t spend a lot of time worrying about stuff like that” [Los Angeles Times].

Researchers used satellite imagery from Google Earth to look for patterns in more than 300 cow-filled pastures from every continent except Antarctica, and in more than 250 herds of deer in the Czech Republic. While every individual animal didn’t face the same direction, the herds, on average, pointed towards either magnetic north or south. That orientation didn’t consistently line up with any aspect of the terrain on which they were grazing, the direction from which the wind was blowing or the direction from which the sun was shining, [co-author Hynek] Burda says. In fact, many of these field observations were made at night, he notes [Science News].

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Google.org, the philanthropic wing of Google, has announced a $10 million investment in a renewable energy technology that’s powered by hot rocks several miles beneath the earth’s surface. The technology, called Enhanced Geothermal Systems (EGS), differs from traditional geothermal energy that relies on finding natural pockets of hot water and steam. Instead, EGS fractures the hot rock, circulates water in its system, and uses the steam created from the process to create electricity in a turbine [Cleantechnica].

The system could augment less reliable renewable energy sources like solar and wind power, which don’t generate steady amounts of energy. Google executive Dan Reicher says EGS would be very dependable, and could be revolutionary. “It’s 24-7, it’s potentially developable all over the country, all over the world, and for all that we really do think it could be the ‘killer app’ of the energy world” [New Scientist].

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