NASA officials sound alarm over future of the Deep Space Network

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/08/nasas-artemis-i-mission-nearly-broke-the-deep-space-network/

by bpierre • 3 years ago

214 133 3 years ago

westurner8• 3 years ago

Loophole-free solutions that do not violate Bell's; entanglement communication: Entangled satellites and QKD repeaters do exist.

Godel had a few interesting spacetime solutions that may be helpful for Deep Space Communications.

Evolved Antenna: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolved_antenna

Rogue wave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rogue_wave

Can DSN be scaled? Or would it be best to use quantum radio?

Hawking radiation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawking_radiation

Perhaps if Hawking radiation is in all the things, Hawking radiation could be used for DSN-like communications.

When phenomena in the quantum foam "dissolve", is there an ~ejection fraction? Couldn't there be ±t per minimally perturbable effect in the quantum foam, though? Maybe internet/p2p-like routing algorithms, or, which field/wave/fluid perturbations are omnidirectional?

Rydberg antenna / Rydberg sensor: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rydberg_atom

The Rydberg sensor can reliably detect signals over the entire spectrum and compare favourably with other established electric field sensor technologies, such as electro-optic crystals and dipole antenna-coupled passive electronics.[59][60]

westurner8• 3 years ago

Additional methods that could potentially be useful if Godel-like wormholes and massless particles are still considered infeasible:

Ambient backscatter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambient_backscatter

Backscatter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter

Passive W-Fi: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_Wi-Fi

LiFi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li-Fi

With ambient backscatter, passive WiFi is already implemented; and maybe someday backscatter LiFi could achieve very high signal efficiency at low-energy in deep space, too?

Could there be deviations from stable patterns in the CMB: Cosmic Microwave Background?

Quantum navigation maps such signal sources such that inexpensive sensors can achieve something like inertial navigation FWIU?

"Smaller, more versatile antenna could be a communications game-changer" (2022) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37337628 :

LightSlingers use volume-distributed polarization currents, animated within a dielectric to faster-than-light [FTL] speeds, to emit electromagnetic waves. (By contrast, traditional antennas employ surface currents of subluminally moving massive particles on localized metallic elements such as dipoles.) Owing to the superluminal motion of the radiation source, LightSlingers are capable of “slinging” tightly focused wave packets with high precision toward a location of choice. This gives them potential advantages over phased arrays in secure communications such as 4G and 5G local networks

/? Curved photon beams: https://www.google.com/search?q=curved+photon+beam

Newer Waveguide approaches;

- "Experiment demonstrates continuously operating optical fiber made of thin air" (2023) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35812168

- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36408561

- https://phys.org/news/2023-06-trillionths-photon-pairs-compr... :

The physicists chose the incidence angles and frequencies so that the co-propagating electrons, which fly through vacuum at half the speed of light, overlap with optical wave crests and troughs of exactly the same speed

PROMPT: Read/write nonlocal spacetime with minimal perturbations at safe energy levels for high-throughput data transmission over astronomical-scale distances

westurner8• 3 years ago

DSN: Deep Space Network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network

ourmandave• 3 years ago

Do the good people at the Flat Earth Society have any response to 'splain this away? =D

engineer_22• 3 years ago

The last time a Flat Earther tried to do science they proved the earth was curved. [1]

[1] - Flat-Earther accidentally proves the earth is round in his own experiment https://youtu.be/GFqmDazwb6Y?si=4umT9XKG6ZCdJWKU

westurner8• 3 years ago

The Holographic Principle says that spacetime is 2D. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle

(Indeed, though, all of the other rotating bodies in n-body gravity fluid spacetime which are visible from here appear to have assumed the shape of a sphere probably like ~fixed-point attraction; and there's no way to swim to the edge)

bmitc• 3 years ago

Flat Earth and other such fringe theories are rarely about the thing itself. So explaining why they're wrong will rarely help because it doesn't answer the questions or resolve the problems that led them there in the first place. The theories are basically a symptom for other things, such as socioeconomic and psychological dynamics.

notRobot• 3 years ago

You cannot logic someone out of a position they didn't logic themselves into.

lisper2• 3 years ago

The DSN is just part of the conspiracy. Those antennas don't actually exist. The images are CGI, and the people who claim to work there have been brainwashed.

datavirtue• 3 years ago

Why are we just hearing about this? Should have been trickling this out because I can't see the citizens jumping to provide funding for this. They are trying to figure out how their teenagers can afford food, car, and college while taking care of grandma. Sounds like a first world problem and the message to struggling citizens has been: make do.

jvanderbot2• 3 years ago

You're just hearing about it because it's now in pop-sci.

Congress has been hearing about it forever. DSN has been a constrained resource for a long, long time.

Ultimatt• 3 years ago

Why would a teenager bother going to college, if the society they live in is decaying and doesn't even maintain capabilities it held three generations prior. Especially if the communicated focus from their parents is to only ever worry about feeding grandma and driving a car.

tetris11• 3 years ago

The cynical way I interpret this: "We need private enterprise to step in to fill this gap, because the public infrastructure is failing".

excalibur• 3 years ago

Problems with the DSN? This is bad! Let's launch a bunch of CubeSats to fly over the antennae and monitor them for issues!

jvanderbot2• 3 years ago

TL;DR the quantity is killing the quality. There are so many small cubesat-style missions that we're actually losing communications time with James Webb to keep track of them all. And Artemis is going to swamp everything with downlink data rates.

I worked at JPL, sometimes with the folks mentioned in this article. I suspect this is a money problem, not a technology problem. IIRC, everyone knows optical (laser) comms are going to carry a lot more load, and the DSN build-out plan already specs more ground-stations with smaller radii (better for closer tracking) vs larger dishes (better for voyager / juno style missions). There's also been commercial support (e.g., Amazon[1])

These folks know how to do it effectively and efficiently (and cheaply) just need the resources and permission.

1. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/amazon-launches-a...

PaulGaspardo2• 3 years ago

The Psyche mission launching in October (to the asteroid of the same name) will include a laser-based communication system technology demonstration, the first beyond the Moon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Optical_Communicati...

And here on Earth there's a new DSN antenna currently under construction at Goldstone (California) that will be capable of handling both radio and optical signals.

https://www.peraton.com/news/meet-dss-23-the-112-foot-wide-a...

So nothing operational yet, but stuff is happening.

dmix2• 3 years ago

We're not going to have bits of data. We're going to have gigabits of data," said Philip Baldwin, acting director of the network services division at JPL. "I don't want 1080p for video resolution. I want 8K video."

Is this a reason why India's moon craft had such low resolution images? I checked and the rover only has 2x 1 megapixel cameras for some 3d stuff. The pictures from the lander were the usual low res generic stuff we've always gotten.

Why cant they put a 4k lense on these things? That has to have scientific value even for looking at their own rovers/landers for defects.

pjc50• 3 years ago

The limit seems to be not the cameras, but the downlink.

dmurray• 3 years ago

You can trade off resolution for time, though. Surely high resolution photos would be useful for some purposes, even if it means you only get a few of them in a day.

squigaviator5• 3 years ago

I think they're pushing for funding to upgrade the bandwidth. More channels, more data we can get at once.

i-use-nixos-btw• 3 years ago

I always wondered the same thing. But my theory wasn’t bandwidth, it was power, cost and (perhaps) weight.

I had no idea that we still monitored these things from the ground.

dmix2• 3 years ago

The power/weight thing is largely solved thanks to cell phones.

But they probably can't just buy it from industry, it has to be custom made for the project, with some gov-heavy regulation no doubt.

But surely they could do far better than 1 megapixel.

marsRoverDev• 3 years ago

Our connectivity to mars is on the order of 12kbps, presumably better for the moon.

My other question would be whether this is due to the need to radiation harden stuff? We were developing for what effectively was equivalent to an arduino in terms of processing power due to the need for radiation hardening (and other legacy / slow moving reasons).

Denvercoder9• 3 years ago

Our connectivity to mars is on the order of 12kbps

It depends on the spacecraft. DSN is currently talking with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter at 1 Mbit/s (https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html, select MRO, click "more detail" in the bottom-left).

jsbisviewtiful• 3 years ago

whether this is due to the need to radiation harden stuff?

It's been a very long time since I read about it so I cannot provide my source but yes that is likely part of it. There's also the resilience of the components to trauma to consider.

dreamcompiler• 3 years ago

One of the key techniques for radiation hardening is big transistor geometries. Big transistors are less susceptiple to SEU (single event upset) caused by cosmic rays [0].

Unfortunately big transistors are old transistors. Modern 7 nm geometries are much too small to be rad-hard. Rad-hardness needs big 20-year-old geometries or even older. That also implies slower clock speeds.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-event_upset

kaliqt3• 3 years ago

That doesn't make sense. Even if the speed is low right now, I don't see why you'd gimp the hardware. You can take higher res pictures and transfer them over longer periods of time.

unnouinceput• 3 years ago

While in the article said "8k video", I suspect he meant 8k live streaming. Which means right now or lose it forever. You can do hybrid if you want. Local cache on hardware that records on 8k, and streams live to 1k, so bandwidth is not exceeded.

irrational• 3 years ago

You might run out of local disk space while waiting for whatever is there to transfer. Assuming you are continuing to take more pictures/videos and want to save them until they can be transferred.

squigaviator5• 3 years ago

Hardware has to withstand the elements, including the radiation. On Earth we have the atmosphere to absorb a substantial amount compared to on Mars and the Moon.

ye-olde-sysrq• 3 years ago

A big problem with computing in space is the radiation environment. To be quite frank, it's absurdly hostile. IIRC the voyagers have very little computing power (so, few things that can malfunction) and even then they run three processors that are already radiation-hardened, and each computation is run in parallel on each processor, and the outcomes are compared among the three to detect and throw away any computations that were altered by radiation-based bit flips.

Such is space. Everything needs to be designed specially for it, especially for trips beyond LEO (where the magnetosphere is still providing you significant protection).

squigaviator5• 3 years ago

The problem with newer sensors and such is that they're not designed to handle the stress of going into space as well withstanding the greatly increased radiation exposure on Mars and the Moon. The missions to send stuff up into space is already expensive and so you'll have to reduce the chances of the gear you're sending up of failing. Unless you can afford to keep making trips to Mars until you get something there that works and then stays working long enough to do viable work.

bozhark• 3 years ago

That seems so counter productive

yencabulator• 3 years ago

The experimental helicopter on Mars might start to change the equation though -- it's built with many commercial grade components, instead of fancier things, and has worked well above expectations. The CPU is just a regular Snapdragon, like in phones.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/nasa-designed-perseverance-helicop...

dr_orpheus4• 3 years ago

Why cant they put a 4k lense on these things

Bigger focal plane means more power, more data processing/storage means more power. More power means more solar arrays/batteries. More solar arrays/batteries means more mass. More mass means larger actuators to move it around. Larger actuators means more power...all of the above means more money.

I can't give a specific reason why, but there are likely cascading effects and system impacts to the mission. Its not like larger space rated focal planes, larger data storage and high powered amplifiers to get more data down don't exist. But at some point you do just have to call it "good enough" or "meets requirements" to avoid the system spiraling out of control.

Salgat• 3 years ago

4K cameras are tiny, and you could only turn them on for a brief moment to take a picture.

JoeAltmaier2• 3 years ago

It's all about bandwidth. Pictures are nice but command and control are vital, so more bandwidth is given over to that.

The bandwidth depends upon the power levels, antenna size, signal strength and the noise level. See the Shannon-Hartley theorem for details.

This means from a small lander on the moon all the way back to earth the bandwidth is small. Sure put a big camera on there, but it'll take weeks to send one picture in its entirety. The Indian lander only has like 2 weeks of life total.

croutonwagon• 3 years ago

Sure but I would assume they would eventually have some type of relay, like lunar gateway. Allow the landers to sip power and send to the relay, probably more a series of satellites in more eccentric orbits, and let those use their bigger solar panels and higher power to transmit/recieve back to ground stations.

I mean, how would we communicate with Mars colonies when the earth and mars are at opposite sides of the sun without some series of satellites in a elliptical orbit possibly at angle perpendicular to our general orbital planes?

xwdv2• 3 years ago

Ok so where do we donate money?

mattkrause• 3 years ago

irs.gov

mminer237• 3 years ago

It's actually part of the BFS, not the IRS: https://www.pay.gov/public/form/start/708094624

kaliqt3• 3 years ago

If you want it to go straight into the shredder, sure.

xwdv2• 3 years ago

I can’t believe no one but the IRS wants all this money.

westurner8• 3 years ago

AMZN! Because they have AWS Ground Station https://aws.amazon.com/ground-station/ :

AWS Ground Station Easily control satellites and ingest data with fully managed Ground Station as a Service

But that doesn't solve for limited availability of regulated spectra or spectra regulation.

Can ionizing radiation affect trapped ions in crystal lattice quantum sensors, for fiber optics?

FWIU degree of collinearity is the degree of quantum entanglement for photons and probably also phonons in a vacuum?

sinuhe69• 3 years ago

For near-earth communications, I don't see why they can not use the SpaceX network or similar instead. Tracking these tiny CubeSats with only 3 DSN dishes are insane! DSN should really work for deep-space missions only.

I believe that NASA recognized the problem and potential solutions, but they moved slowly probably due to their clunky bureaucracy.

NASA relies on commercial ground stations for more than half of its ground station support for the agency's satellites in low-Earth orbit. NASA last year selected SpaceX, Amazon, Viasat, Telecast, SES, and Inmarsat to begin developing commercial capabilities to replace the government-owned Tracking and Data Relay Satellite network, which is used for near-continuous connectivity with the International Space Station and other satellites closer to Earth.

ceejayoz3• 3 years ago

Those CubeSats were a deep-space mission. Out near the Moon.

The TDRSS is separate from DSN. Expanding low-orbit options won't do anything to help here.

JCharante• 3 years ago

I didn’t realize Cubesats could go that far. That’s really great.

Tangurena2• 3 years ago

Ukraine has been having trouble with the Starlink because Putin & Musk are pals. It isn't safe for our country to depend on someone that flaky.

dismalpedigree2• 3 years ago

Any evidence to back up that claim?

inemesitaffia• 3 years ago

Ukraine has been having issues because bills weren't paid in full

pro-kythera• 3 years ago

So the DSN has some properties of cooperative multitasking ... what could go wrong?

“When Artemis comes online, everybody else moves out of the way, and it’s an impact to all the science missions, even the flagship science missions," Dodd said.
What makes CubeSats appealing to NASA and research scientists is what makes them unappealing to the Deep Space Network, Dodd said. ... "When your DSN is oversubscribed, I don't think it's a good use to put throwaway missions on the same set of antennas.

NKosmatos2• 3 years ago

This is ridiculous from NASA point of view :-( They're shooting their self in the foot.

They should fund the DSN and make sure that not only all antennas are operational, but build new ones at the 3 locations or even better create additional locations.

A strike from DSN personnel would teach NASA to spend some money on dish antennas. It's insane to "throw" hundred of billions of USD for Artemis and not invest 1 billion for the comms infrastructure.

I guess it won't be long until a "genius" manager comes up with the idea of DSNaaS (Deep Space Network as a Service) :-)

Bonus link, live console/status of the DSN: https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

ceejayoz3• 3 years ago

It's insane to "throw" hundred of billions of USD for Artemis and not invest 1 billion for the comms infrastructure.

Perhaps, but that's largely not in NASA's control; Congress appropriates money for specific purposes. NASA can't legally go grab Artemis money and shift it over to DSN.

NKosmatos2• 3 years ago

I agree, but perhaps they should've included in the Artemis budget a small item for comms investment/modernization. Or even better spread out the DSN cost in all missions (JWST, Orion...) and also ask partners like ESA and JAXA to help cover the costs.

dylan6046• 3 years ago

The DSN has facilities located around the globe which is most definitely not in Congressional districts, so it's not capable of being a jobs program. That might help explain why it gets such little attention.

Roark66• 3 years ago

I guess it won't be long until a "genius" manager comes up with the idea of DSNaaS (Deep Space Network as a Service) :-)

Well, it doesn't seem such a bad idea considering the alternative is to do nothing. (now if the alternative was to build more sites and more antennas that would be great, but I think its unlikely).

As for DSNaaS it could be provided by a number of competing companies just like intercontinental fiber links are today.

rnk2• 3 years ago

Sorry but you are pretty much missing the entire point, maybe you aren't in the us but this doesn't work like you expect. Nasa has really limited budget options. Congress points them toward specific things like Artemis and funds those. Nasa often has to use a tiny bit of money on the side for the irreplaceable things like voyager being continued and upgrading the DSN - all the money in the world can't replace them without decades of effort, for example.

binkHN• 3 years ago

...live console/status of the DSN: https://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

Very cool--you can even see the data rate for each one, AND the animation changes if the data rate is higher.

secondcoming• 3 years ago

This is highly likely to be a dumb question, but can each dish only communicate with one object at a time?

comrh• 3 years ago

INAL but I don't think they can strike https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Service_Labor-Manageme...

dismalpedigree2• 3 years ago

Artemis (like the F35/JSF) is a jobs program that happens to eventually produce an aircraft/spacecraft. Maintenance of existing communication systems doesn’t get the public excited like “we are building cutting edge aerospace technologies”

MR4D6• 3 years ago

I don't understand why one of the first priorities for NASA and the moon isn't a satellite communications systems designed for the moon.

I truly believe that NASA would fare much better if they focused on regulation, deep space research, and communication. They already do the first 2, but for some reason, they neglect communication.

They build these fantastic probes, but then don't build out a communication network. This *despite the fact that they have people like Vint Cerf at their disposal !! This just boggles my mind.

Once they build out for the moon, they could have a blueprint for deep space, while still being easy enough to iterate on designs (the moon being a much closer and easier to reach target, thereby reducing the development/test/feedback loop, as they wouldn't have to wait 6+ months for travel time.

ceejayoz3• 3 years ago

It is one of their priorities.

https://tempo.gsfc.nasa.gov/projects/LCRNS?tab=overview

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commercial_Lunar_Mission_Suppo...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LunaNet

MR4D6• 3 years ago

The first two words of your NASA link are "In 2022.." they established it.

NASA started way after artemis, which strongly suggests this is an afterthought. The documents are design and planning of the architecture, - nowhere near rollout.

Further, STMD doesn't even mention anything close to communications on it's home page (correct me if I missed it). It's also not listed on their Spacetech page [0]. Also, teh LNSS project only goes so far as a demonstration scheduled for 2028 that will test whether they can pick up earth-GPS signals on the moon. [1]

Communications is essential to growing work outside of earth orbit. Nowhere do I see that NASA has this as a "priority".

Now, it's possible that NASA has 1,000 priorities, but that just means they have none.

I appreciate the ESA link - glad to see they are doing something about this, but I was referring to the article about NASA and NASA priorities. I get that we share things, but really, there is nothing significantly there regarding NASA.

[0] https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/programs [1] - https://www.gps.gov/cgsic/meetings/2022/murata.pdf

dotnet005• 3 years ago

It's a priority for NASA, but it isn't a priority for the snakes in Congress, who don't really care about anything beyond their approaching graves and thus only see NASA as a jobs program.

Satellite communications systems aren't as easy of a jobs program as giant outdated rockets, thus they'll only allocate funding to SLS at the cost of everything else.

MR4D6• 3 years ago

I respectfully disagree (well, ok, Congress sucks, sure). But NASA has too many priorities (which means they really have none).

If they can't make space-internet sexy, then they should hire a marketing firm. Heck, insurance companies (insurance!!!) are able to raise millions from VC firms, then space-internet should be able to raise something from Congress.

My belief is that it's not really important to NASA, and they aren't really trying to sell it to congress. My bet at this point is that the Chinese have internet access on the moon before we do (albeit they're firewalled version).

wduquette• 3 years ago

Once they build out for the moon, they could have a blueprint for deep space

It's the other way around, actually. JPL and others, including Vint Cerf, have been working on the blueprint for a couple of decades, and the spacecraft in orbit around Mars have been acting as relays for the landers (e.g., Perseverence) for years. It's a question of bringing something similar to the Moon.

MR4D6• 3 years ago

Fair point on design - I was thinking more of implementation, and should have worded it more clearly.

mabbo• 3 years ago

I think you over-simplify the challenge.

Satellites have limited lifespans. You can build them bigger, better, stronger, to last longer, but inevitably they break down and cannot be serviced. One micrometeorite in the wrong place, and the entire investment is gone. Even the day to day wear and tear from the radiation of space slowly breaks them down.

What's more, they can't change orbit once launched. If you lose one, you can't reposition another to make up the difference. It's just a gap, so you need high redundancy.

You would need very well-built satellites (expensive) with high powered transmitters (expensive because they need lots of power/solar panels) in a large network (lots of them) to provide high redundancy. They'd also each need to be launched with an expensive rocket (maybe when Starship is operating?).

The DSN using dishes on the ground on earth is the cheaper option, because you can fix things that break. It's maintainable with a low ongoing cost instead of a super high up-front cost.

MR4D6• 3 years ago

I agree with everything you say. However, as we move beyond near-earth space, we will need better communications systems. The moon provides an ability to work out things like replacing/repairing/ decommissioning a satellite beyond earth's orbit but much easier & quicker to get to than anywhere else in the solar system.

Also, satellites can last a long time. There are GPS satellites that are a quarter of a century old and still functioning [0]. I didn't check about other satellites, but I'm sure there are older ones.

If we are to become a space-faring species, then we will need to learn how to do this. Original sea-faring peoples did this millenia ago, and today we ship all sorts of things to every corner of the globe.

Building a shared communication infrastructure is a logical next step. Otherwise we are going to build oversized devices with larger batteries almost like making a walkie-talkie trying to communicate between countries - it's not a good approach. Build out the infrastructure and then the devices (probes/satellites/spacecraft/etc) can leverage the shared infrastructure.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPS_satellite_blocks

eterevsky• 3 years ago

Aren't missions paying for the usage of DSN? How come a small cubesat gets the amount of time on the network comparable to JWST?

Could this be commercialized? If there's high demand it should be profitable to build new dishes to increase bandwidth.

snowwrestler• 3 years ago

I don’t think missions are individually billed for DSN time, rather DSN time is allocated according to NASA internal priorities. Which is a classic resourcing problem in bureaucracies.

That also explains the challenge for private investment. If none of the missions are budgeted to buy bandwidth, then you would have no customers for a private DSN service.

dr_orpheus4• 3 years ago

Yes and no. There are usage cost times for DSN stations [0]. That link is old and says it is on the order of $1000/hr in 2009. Inflation adjusted it would be more, but I think costs have actually risen to closer to a $5000/hr. Theoretically each of the eight cubesat missions would be paying this cost, so that would come out to $500k that each of them would be paying. Not a lot for larger space missions, but may be a lot for a cubesat mission. However, I doubt that they are all paying for this and is was just part of the usage agreement to host their mission on Artemis. Some of the cubesats are also NASA sponsored so they would just be paying themselves.

It likely is somewhat profitable, but would require a huge investment. Some have suggested (can't find the source) that the DSN should be charging closer to $35,000/hr to cover costs of maintenance and building new dishes to expand the network, but NASA themselves can't be a for profit company. So if there was someone providing commercial ground services for deep space, lets say with commercial efficiency they get services to cost $20,000/hr. Great! But why would I do that if I can still go to DSN and pay $5000.

But as the article indicates there were probably be a reckoning soon because I've already heard people describe scheduling and allocation of DSN time at JPL as a battle royale.

https://deepspace.jpl.nasa.gov/files/6_NASA_MOCS_2014_10_01_...

kaliqt3• 3 years ago

Wellp, at this rate they should just ask SpaceX to do it for Mars and piggyback off it for everything else.

RecycledEle• 3 years ago

If You think it's bad now, wait until Starship starts dumping hundreds of tons of space probes all over.

The obvious solution is more big antennas on Earth and network if store-and-forward relays all over the Solar System.

I predict they'll get cheap instead of fixing it.

palata• 3 years ago

The obvious solution is more big antennas on Earth

Or sending less crap in space...

navels• 3 years ago

The problem of intergalactic communication is a plot point in this fantastic sci-fi novel I am currently reading (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fire_Upon_the_Deep) cannot recommend enough although it doesn't really inform the current conversation :-)

NASA officials sound alarm over future of the Deep Space Network

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