Engineers at NASA have successfully tested Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) technology which now makes it possible to use 'interplanetary Internet'. In their recently conducted experiments, Expedition 33 commander Sunita Williams remote controlled a LEGO robot situated on Earth (at European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany)  from the space station.  The experiment was aimed at exploring the possibilities of using DTN to control a robotic rover from an orbiting planetary body.



NASA believes that with the advancement of DTN technology, it will be possible to setup an inter-planetary Internet for communication and control over very large distances. The demonstration involved sending commands to a surface robot from space and receive the images and sensor data back. Badri Younes of NASA says that this will allow engineers to remote control the rovers on Mars while using the orbiting satellites as relay stations. At the core of the DTN is Bundle Protocol (BP) which is very similar to the IP (internet protocol) which is most commonly used for communication between the servers connected to the Internet.

We hope to be able to make a Skype call between Mars and Earth in our lifetime.

Via: NASA, ESA Use Experimental Interplanetary Internet to Test Robot From | NASA