PNSIG Board Member Dr. Alberto Montilla has recently written an article entitled “Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) in space”. It’s available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/positioning-navigation-timing-pnt-space-dr-alberto-montilla/ Alberto explains the basics of PNT and explains how the GPS and other PNT systems provide this service to devices like your cell phone on the earth’s surface. On the moon, PNT becomes even more critical than on earth. The lack of recognizable landmarks can make even short distance navigation hazardous (ask the Apollo 14 astronauts who almost got lost during their EVA). So NASA intends to provide PNT services as part of its LunaNet deployment on the moon. In order to leverage existing infrastructure and overcome technical challenges in extending PNT services to the moon, NASA and other agencies have been working to extend this range by taking advantage of a radiation pattern effect: the side lobe coverage. Beyond that, NASA has been working on ways to provide PNT services to spacecraft in deep space. This required the development of highly miniaturized atomic clocks which could be launched into space. For more details on this fascinating topic, read Alberto’s article.

The IPNSIG Board met last Thursday, 18-Mar-2021. We wanted to update our members about that meeting and the major items discussed and decisions reached. The Board decided to apply for Chapter status within ISOC later this year. The decision was made to further expand and broaden the impact of IPNSIG activities as a standing ISOC chapter. Time frame for the application process to start is probably the beginning of the third quarter. No action will be required of current members. If our application is approved, current SIG members will become Chapter members. The Board confirmed that we will complete filing with the State of California and the United States Internal Revenue Service to establish our 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation status. This will greatly facilitate fund raising and is a requirement for Chapter formation. The Board confirmed earlier discussions that we will continue to coordinate and assist in organizing the annual STINT Workshops. If you recall, we helped STINT last year in securing speakers for its annual workshop and in marketing the event. Kaneko updated the board regarding early planning for a Projects Working Group (PWG) Workshop to be conducted as a webinar, which is to be conducted jointly with the Strategy Working Group (SWG). Stay tuned for more information. Thanks for your continued participation and support.

OPS-SAT is a CubeSat (small form factor satellite based upon 10CM cube-shaped modules) launched by the European Space Agency (ESA) late in 2019. Its mission: demonstrate improvements in mission control capabilities based on a cheaper, more capable (in terms of computing power) satellite platform. Even though only a 3U CubeSat measuring (exclusive of solar panels) only 96 mm × 96 mm × 290 mm (3.8 in × 3.8 in × 11.4 in) and weighing in at only 7 kg (15.4 lbs.), OPS-SAT delivers impressive capabilities: its experimental computer is 10X more powerful than any current ESA spacecraft. Such computational power in such a tiny package enables a lot of innovation. Space agencies have traditionally been relatively conservative when it comes to the pace of innovation, This is understandable: space vehicles and missions are expensive to plan and deploy. During the Space Shuttle era, the average NASA mission cost was $450M. This has rapidly decreased over the last 13 years. Cost per pound to put something into orbit was $10K then. Today, SpaceX is advertising $2.5K per pound. As can be seen from the image at the left, OPS-SAT is really small, making it feasible to share the cost of boosting a satellite into space with many other users, substantially reducing mission costs. More specifically, tiny satellites like OPS-SAT represent much less financial risk. Larger ESA satellites can cost up to €60M to put in orbit. OPS-SAT cost only €1.4M. Beyond lower financial risk, OPS-SAT is so robust, it can literally be rebooted if necessary to recover from an error. It’s actually a satellite within a satellite. Control can be swapped between the two and they monitor each other. This degree of robustness allows real time experimentation on critical control functions during flight. 7 years in development, it’s the first nanosatellite to be directly owned by ESA and controlled by ESA/ESOC. Its high-powered 800 MHz processor allows “normal” software (Linux, JAVA, and Python) to control the satellite. Firmware can also be upgraded during flight. OPS-SAT’s uplink is 4 xs higher than any other ESA spacecraft. Uplinks of up to 50 mb/sec are possible on RF links. It has a laser receiver, which should be capable of even higher uplink and downlink speeds. It’s also designed to be open in order to encourage innovation. Experiment uploads were encouraged for corporations, academic institutions and even individuals. More information about registering to become a part of the OPS-SAT community and for instructions about how to submit software for approved registration is available at: https://opssat1.esoc.esa.int/. Further information about testing, uploading and running software are also available there. Experimentation on OPS-SAT is available at no cost until November, 2021. The OPS-SAT program is innovative in both its approach to satellite hardware AND it’s organization to encourage innovation by many stakeholders. As of mid-December, 2020, 153 experiments had been registered with the OPS-SAT community. We will continue looking into the OPS-SAT program by looking at one of its first successful experiments involving DTN. We’ll follow that with a profile of the company behind that experiment: D3TN. More coming soon… Some short, introductory YouTube videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbW8o1tk_Mc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uEvGfipmAw

Among the key advantages that led to the emergence of the TCP/IP protocol suite as the foundation of the Internet architecture was publication of the TCP/IP specifications as fully open standards, which could be implemented by anybody. Proprietary networking architectures such as IBM’s Systems Network Architecture (SNA), Digital Equipment’s DECnet, and the Xerox Network Systems (XNS) framework lent themselves less easily to widespread adoption. In the Interplanetary Networking community we are trying hard to replicate that success by establishing universally available open Delay-Tolerant Networking standards. We hope to encourage a wide range of interoperable protocol implementations that can address all the use cases that anyone can think of. So far, progress is encouraging. Among the implementations of Bundle Protocol that we know of are: DTN2, the original reference implementation, developed largely by Mike Demmer at UC Berkeley. DTN2’s lineal descendant DTNME, currently in use for International Space Station (ISS) operations and maintained by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. ION, likewise in use for ISS operations, developed and maintained mainly at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. cFS BPlib, soon to fly on the PACE mission, developed and maintained at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. An implementation developed by the European Space Agency (ESA). IBR-DTN, developed at Technische Universität Braunschweig. uPCN, developed by D3TN GmbH, Dresden. HDTN, a high-speed implementation developed at NASA’s Glenn Research Center. PyDTN, written in Python X-Works. Experimental implementations written in Java, Go, and Rust. More important than the number and variety of implementations, though, is the demonstrated interoperability of those implementations. Interoperation venues have ranged from the informal, as in the uPCN/PyDTN interoperability testing performed at the IETF 101 Hackathon, to the operational, as in the ION/DTNME-based architecture supporting ISS and the ION/BPlib framework supporting PACE. In January an international team executed an especially gratifying testbed demonstration, in preparation for a planned interoperation experiment that will include Lunar Ice Cube mission communications. The testbed included: One DTN node running cFS BPlib, emulating the Lunar Ice Cube spacecraft. One DTN node running ION, emulating the Lunar Ice Cube mission operations center. One DTN node running ESA’s implementation of BP, emulating an ESA ground station, which forwarded bundles between the other two nodes. The cFS BPlib code base does not include an implementation of Licklider Transmission Protocol, instead relying on Aggregate Custody Signaling (ACS) for reliability in bundle transmission. However, the ESA BP implementation does not include an implementation of ACS; instead, the ION node closes the custody transfer loop with the emulated spacecraft, with the ESA node forwarding bundles from the ION node including the aggregate custody signals. This may be the first demonstration of sustainable Solar System Internet architecture, relying on the interoperability of different BP implementations developed by different national space agencies. We think it won’t be the last.

The IPNSIG Strategy Working Group (SWG) carried out a workshop on “How can we build a sustainable IPN?” on Feb. 22nd. For the first time in history, high level strategic principles and the strategic approaches to guide the deployment of a Solar System Internet (SSI) driven by the Inter-Planetary Networking technology has been discussed with 85 participants from 10 nations across the globe. Thanks to every IPNSIG community member who attended, and with your input, we are now halfway on our road to deliver a Strategy Report on how to deliver an SSI. Link to recorded session: https://cloud-user-recordings-converted-prod.s3-ap-south-1.amazonaws.com/recordings/e9750820-7039-11eb-94e5-c78867df03a0/481abd3e-3ba1-4ffd-8ccc-c1da604689b0/e9750820-7039-11eb-94e5-c78867df03a0_0001_a5aefa4a.mp4 At the workshop, the SWG presented their vision on how the SSI architecture or its operation model could change over time in the 30 to 100 years and shared their views on the key principles that would support the evolution of it. The SWG introduced the key principles that include Collaboration, Global Standards, Stability, Democracy, Affordability, Expandability and Security. As the construct of SSI is a human endeavor, the SWG presented their strategic approaches on the concept of vision sharing, co-creation, risk sharing and pooling & sharing to be put in place by the public and the private sectors. Excellent views were shared by the participants: Global standards are the enablers to cultivate business cases and eventually an ecosystem by the commercial sector. Entities who provides funds to build SSI may have control over the Global standards. Cultivating public interest is significant and will be a strong thrust to realize our endeavors in SSI. IPNSIG will be planning for more workshops in the future.

We are pleased to announce the membership of our Technical Documentation Work Group: Work Group Lead: Scott Burleigh Work Group Members: Laura Chappell, Henry Danielson, Daniel Kalemi, Scott Landman, Ben Scott, Ginny Spicer The Work Group has begun meeting and is making progress toward organizing IPN information resources into an easily accessible online library. Watch for announcements as we begin compiling this highly heterogenous digital reference.

Today, we are pleased to announce the formation of the Pilot Projects Work Group (PWG). Work Group Lead: Oscar Garcia – Unified Medical Records – DHIN Inc. Work Group Members: Dr. Larissa Suzuki – Google Inc. Dr. Alberto Montilla Bravo – Spatiam Corporation Juan Fraire – CONICET – National University of Cordoba – Argentina Alberto Montilla Ochoa – Spatiam CorporationJesus David Terrazas – University of Manitoba – Canada Work Group Advisors: Scott Burleigh – Jet Propulsion Laboratory/NASA Dr. Keith Scott – Mitre Corporation Several IPNSIG members have shown their interest in joining the PWG activities and will be introduced to the group in subsequent meetings. PWG is committed to expanding the use of DTN in practical situations in different landscapes. Members of PWG will be working in implementing DTN in various areas such as: connectivity between Clouds services first responder’s system for emergency situations medical records for space exploration IoT and interfacing with Clouds communications in extreme environments security routing in Space and Earth e-commerce over satellite networks imagery analysis and processing with artificial intelligence using Cloud services technical tools for testing connectivity and stability fast deployment kits DTN protocols integration to off the shelf operating systems, programming languages and database engines We are committed to the success of our mission and are also eager to hear about initiatives from IPNSIG members who are engaged in research and implementation of DTN technologies. If you are developing DTN applications and you would like to share your experience, please contact PWG at info@ipnsig.org. Some references to efforts by the PWG members: Presentations at the Space-Terrestrial Internetworking workshop (STINT) in October 2020. https://www.stintworkshops.org/ Testing Connectivity between Clouds using DTN – one of the first demonstrations that successfully completed its first stage in January 2021. http://ipnsig.org/2020/12/17/connecting-clouds-with-dtn/ Best regards, Oscar Garcia, Pilot Projects Working Group Lead IPNSIG Board Member

IPNSIG member Juan Fraire has crafted an excellent set of new logos for IPNSIG. We will be increasingly incorporating these into our website and communications. Members of the IPNSIG board met with Juan repeatedly over the past couple of months to discuss the logo and review iterations. We’re really pleased with the results, and we trust you will be pleased also. Various versions of the logo are shown below. In the words of the designer: This logo intends to express the shape of concentric circular orbits accompanied by stars on the background. Orbital paths are discontinuous, to transmit the feeling of disruption, a natural feature of interplanetary networking. Color codes are lighter at the center mimicking sun/star light. Notice the logo works on clear/dark backgrounds (i.e., paper, space flyers, publicity, etc.) and plain black/ white versions are adequate for monochrome printing. Thanks so much to Juan for his work!

We will be publishing a newsletter every month, highlighting some topics of interest to our membership. Our inaugural newsletter is authored by IPNSIG cofounder and Board Member Vint Cerf. Enjoy! As I write these words, I am listening to Jupiter by Holst and thinking about the increased pace of space exploration and development as this third decade of the 21st Century progresses. The commercialization of space is not new, given that communication satellites have been around since 1962 when Telstar 1 was launched, but the ambitious scope of Elon Musk’s Starlink plans and the pace at which SpaceX is launching both crewed and uncrewed vehicles highlight a “space rush” that echoes the “land rushes” of the late 1800s in Oklahoma and elsewhere. Blue Origin (Bezos), OneWeb (UK Government and Bharti Global) and Virgin Galactic (Branson) are all illustrative of this renaissance. Adding to that, there are the multiple successful Moon missions launched by China, the Mars and outer planet missions of the US and Europe and Japan’s mission to the asteroids. Crewed missions are picking up steam with the eight-country Artemis and Gateway missions to return to the Moon. Plans continue for the longer term sample-return and crewed missions to Mars and other deep space targets. New space telescopes are soon to be launched. All of this activity demands enhancement of communication support for the crewed and robotic missions to come. IPNSIG’s focus on developing space-based networking is relevant and timely. While the design of the Interplanetary Internet, sometimes called the Solar System Internet, began in 1998 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, it has reached a new stage of maturity as NASA, ESA, JAXA among others plan infusion of the delay and disruption tolerant Bundle Protocol (BP) into current and planned missions and infrastructure. Active members of IPNSIG are reporting implementation of the Bundle Protocol and its companion Licklider Transmission Protocol (LTP) in the Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services Cloud. Implementations are progressing for CubeSats, Raspberry Pi’s and Android-based mobile phones. Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) is becoming a practical reality including an application to track reindeer in the far north of Sweden by the University of Luleå. All of these are signs that IPNSIG’s primary mission, the extension of the conceptual Internet into space, is entering a new and energetic phase. The expansion of the IPNSIG Board and election of new Board Chair Yosuke Kaneko of JAXA underscores the opportunity for IPNSIG to make material contributions to the maturation of space-based communication protocols. In the months ahead, I hope and expect that we can offer opportunities to IPNSIG members to support the renewed global interest in space exploration and potential commercialization. What an exciting time to be alive!

A historical feat connecting clouds with DTN by IPNSIG members! On Friday, November 27, 2020, Oscar Garcia, Board Member of IPNSIG and developer of the Medical Records System for Space Exploration, and Dr. Larissa Suzuki, Data/AI Practice Lead of United Kingdom and Ireland at Google, DTN expert at Google and member of IPNSIG, made the first DTN-enabled interconnection between servers in the Google and Amazon cloud services. The first message between the servers was the salutation and response between Mr. Garcia and Dr. Suzuki sent at 5:36 PM UTC (Universal Standard TIme), 12:36 EST. This development, sponsored by IPNSIG, and inspired by Vinton Cerf, Board Member of IPNSIG and one of the Fathers of the Internet, was technically advised by Scott Burleigh, from NASA/JPL and developer of the ION implementation of the DTN Bundle Protocol currently used in the International Space Station, and was supported by Michael Snell, past IPNSIG President and currently Secretary/Treasurer. This achievement was the product of several months of development in applying the Interplanetary Bundle Protocol to demonstrate the use of DTN techniques to interconnect existing terrestrial systems. Several applications are in development between IPNSIG members and other groups for the utilization of the Bundle Protocol for situations like first responders, medical records, e-commerce and others for conditions where regular Internet connectivity is not permanently available or stable. http://ipnsig.org/2020/08/08/dtn-for-beginners-info/ https://sourceforge.net/projects/ion-dtn/ https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc5050 For more information please contact info@ipnsig.org

IPNSIG Board member Dr. Alberto Montilla has published an article on LinkedIn about NASA’s plans for LunaNet: an Internet infrastructure to support lunar exploration as mankind returns to the surface of the moon– as early as 2024! Dr. Montilla explains NASA’s plans for an Internet infrastructure on the moon supporting Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) services, Science data, and Detection, as well as other services. Of course, DTN’s will play a key role in that infrastructure. Planned throughput capacity is quite large, enough to accommodate several simultaneous video streams. The full article is available here: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/lunanet-nasa-network-moon-dr-alberto-montilla/. Discover how LunaNet is a critical step in building out the InterPlanetary Network.

As the new Board continues its work in fleshing out our strategy for 2020/2021, new Working Group documents have been completed. Outreach/Stakeholder Engagement WG (managed by Mike Snell) can be accessed here: OWG Overview final https://drive.google.com/file/d/1hjPHtis1QiApdzTDg51LMT7Yb6vyaYJH Technical Documentation WG (managed by Scott Burleigh) can be accessed here IPNSIG TDWG final https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pBKtvENO-X6wtkTS2R0jfgiOFAc7v2wn Of course, we need your help in order to implement our plans! If you are interested in becoming involved in the Outreach/Stakeholder WG, please drop a note to ipnsig-owg@ipnsig.org. If you are interested in becoming involved in the Technical Documentation WG, please drop a note to ipnsig-tdwg@ipnsig.org.