Getting knowledge in from deep area might be tough. Virtually all of our missions which have flown into deep area use the Deep House Community, a system of transmitters and receivers that already imposes constraints on the quantity of information we are able to switch from the far reaches of area. So a crew led by Joshua Vander Hook, then at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and now at a start-up referred to as Outrider.ai, got here up with a technique to dramatically improve the throughput of the DSN. In so doing, they gave it a really catchy title – the Photo voltaic System Pony Specific.
Dr. Vander Hook was initially supported by a NASA Institute for Superior Ideas (NIAC) grant in 2021. The fundamental idea makes use of what is called a “cycler” orbit, the place a spacecraft repeatedly orbits between two our bodies within the photo voltaic system utilizing their gravity wells to swing round in sync with when their orbits cross one another.
On this case, the spacecraft would include a communications relay module that might gather high-throughput knowledge from an observer module parked in orbit across the different physique. The observer module would persistently obtain knowledge from the missions working in its native space after which, when a relay module will get shut, would quickly ship all of that knowledge to the biking spacecraft. The cycler then returns to Earth, the place one other fast obtain course of begins, and the cycle repeats itself.
That sounds just like the Pony Specific – a system within the 1800s whereby mail carriers would experience bodily ponies (or horses) to ship mail sometimes to distant outposts within the American West. In one other homage to that mail service heritage, the crew named the biking relay satellites “knowledge mules.”
These knowledge mules would have an extended journey between Earth and their goal vacation spot. It would come as no shock that in a lot of the literature surrounding the concept the goal vacation spot was Mars. Buzz Aldrin, essentially the most well-known proponent of cycler orbits, advised that cycler “castles” may successfully shuttle folks and items between Mars and Earth. However on this new configuration, as a substitute of bodily issues, it could be extra useful to ship knowledge.
Credit score – Marc Sanchez-Web et al.
Calculations described in a paper launched final yr estimate that with as little as six knowledge mules, the community may present a bandwidth of 1 petabyte a yr from the floor of Mars whereas solely requiring a minor allocation of time on the DSN. That might probably enable some real-time high-definition video from the purple planet, which might undoubtedly be enticing to lots of the inhabitants of its nearest neighbor.
Nonetheless, such excessive knowledge charges come at a value. Within the case of the Photo voltaic System Pony Specific, that value is latency. The excessive throughput knowledge switch attainable between the observer and a knowledge mule, after which once more from the information mule again to a receiving station on Earth, is barely attainable if they’re in bodily proximity to one another, because the community would use a kind of high-throughput optical communications community. And since cycler orbits can take years, it could be years after the information was collected on the purple planet that anybody may use it.
That isn’t a present stopper – certainly, many individuals can be okay with ready for over a yr for a high-definition video from Mars if that’s the solely means for them to see it. Nevertheless it makes funding such a mission harder given the speedy suggestions tradition prevalent in lots of at present’s media. Give the authors credit score, although – they acknowledge this limitation and, as all good scientists do, point out that it could be subject for additional research.
For proper now, that additional research appears to be on maintain. Dr. Vander Hook has moved on to different non-space-related efforts. Whereas there was some curiosity from researchers elsewhere, resembling a paper from the College of Illinois, there’s at present no clear path ahead for the mission. However, there’ll at all times be a need for extra knowledge switch from farther out within the photo voltaic system. If the Pony Specific is essentially the most cost-effective technique to get it firstly of our explorations, then don’t be shocked if this idea is resurrected someday sooner or later.
Be taught Extra:
Pascarella et al – Low-thrust trajectory optimization for the photo voltaic system pony specific
Sanchez Web et al – Cycler Orbits and Photo voltaic System Pony Specific
UT – NASA has too Many Spacecraft to Talk With. Time to Construct Extra Dishes
UT – We’re Getting into a New Age When Spacecraft Talk With Lasers
Lead Picture:
Artist’s depiction of a consultant cycler orbit.
Credit score – Joshua Vander Hook
