Internet on ISS

No, the ISS is not in GeoIP databases. xkcd, 713 .

The International Space Station is an artificial satellite of the Earth, whose orbit is about 400 kilometers above sea level. Once a few months the station is supplied with the necessary equipment and supplies, four times a year - the crew is changed. But for work and comfortable existence, not only food, water and air are needed. It is also important to keep in touch with loved ones and the rest of the world.

Today, just a regular audio connection with the family does not get off. The ISS has Internet access. Astronauts, cosmonauts and station guests have access to the network. They lead accounts on social networking sites and microblogging. To realize this luxury, it is necessary to solve both the task of creating a communication channel and ensuring its safety.

Access to the web did not appear immediately, but only in 2010 in order to reduce the psychological burden of isolation from the rest of the world. As astronaut Clayton Anderson recalls , during his short stay in April 2010, he managed to catch a novelty. At that time, Twitter was gaining momentum, and the astronaut tried to write a tweet from the cabin of the Japanese Soichi Noguchi. The download went so long that Anderson did not wait. In the end, he went to delivering tweets by email.
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Internet communication with the ISS takes place in the K _u- band using the TRDS constellation satellite system in geosynchronous orbit. Information goes to the ISS at speeds up to 3 megabits per second, data can go to Earth at speeds up to 300 megabits per second. However, the average is not 300, but around 50 megabits per second. And this tiny channel is just beginning to decrease with the features of the implementation of access to the Network.

There are several dozen ThinkPad notebooks on the ISS. From the earth they differ in some modifications. For example, the passive cooling system of power supply units in microgravity conditions will not work - warm air will not rise up. A unique space object, which has cost mankind a hundred and fifty billion dollars, in no case should be subjected to hacker attacks and cyber attacks. Therefore, for security laptops are divided into categories according to the main function.


Sunita Williams works for ThinkPad T61p.

The Portable Computer System (PCS) machines are connected via a 1553 bus as remote terminals. When designing the station, the role of laptops was reduced to terminals - they can be repaired or replaced. PCS runs on Linux, and is not used for any other tasks. On the screens of these laptops, a custom graphic representation of the station is launched to control its individual nodes and receive telemetry. But it’s impossible to get on the Internet with PCS.

So, go to the Internet on the ISS using a Station Support Computer (SSC) laptop on Windows. These same machines are used for any other tasks - from note taking, sending e-mail to Outlook, video calling to viewing documentation and media files. From the same machines write tweets. Upgrades to Linux never happened . With rare exceptions, all astronauts and astronauts have never seen UNIX-like systems. Retraining to use open analogues of Word and Excel makes little sense. In addition to laptops, crew members use tablet computers to go online.

Computers 1 and 2 work under Windows, 3 - Linux.

As such, there is no Internet access on the ISS. There is only access to the internal network of NASA. As NASA employee Robert Frost writes , page rendering takes place on Earth. The document from 2011 indicates that Citrix XenDesktop is deployed using Citrix Branch Repeater to create the infrastructure for remote desktops.

When a crew member opens a page, he actually looks at the image drawn on a computer in Houston via a remote desktop. So it is possible to provide a high degree of security - even if they are overlooked behind surfing, any possible contamination will remain within the Earth. But to say something about the quality of the connection will be difficult.

Suppose an astronaut peeks his daughter's Instagram account. A click to enlarge the image first via Wi-Fi or Ethernet comes from the laptop to the local network server at the station, then to the K _u- band communication equipment. From the antenna, the signal goes to one of the TDRS satellites, about 35 thousand kilometers away from the ISS. A group of TDRS satellites then send a signal to a plate in White Sands in New Mexico.

On Earth, data travels over the NASA Integrated Services Network (NISN) at Mission Control Center at the Lyndon Johnson Space Center in Houston. The request to increase the picture comes to a computer that is connected to the Internet. Only here is the actual increase. The request is sent to the Instagram server. Exactly the same thing happens that happens to ordinary earth users - server response, data exchange, file retrieval. The data goes back to the ISS.

Thus, the speed of fermentation on the web for the inhabitants of the ISS is determined by the state of the K _u- band network, the plates in White Sands, the channel to Houston, and the Internet channel itself in Houston. From this list is the last - so-so. Therefore, the performance of the channel with which the astronauts and astronauts work, varies.

. @PrestynChapman @NASA We have a slow internet connection. Worse than what dial-up was like. Using it to answer your question right now.

- Scott Kelly (@StationCDRKelly) April 26, 2015

Communication is 45-50 minutes per hour. The Internet is sometimes slow, but there is a reliable email. It is preferable to receive information on it.

. @emilner we have a very slow internet connection. Email was the preferred way to get info.

- Reid Wiseman (@astro_reid) February 20, 2015

Sometimes the connection works well. Every day gigabytes of video are downloaded in both directions, and the channel is enough.

With regard to security and locks, the channel is limited in the same way as all NASA computers. The list of blocked and obviously unrelated websites is determined by a special security department. As cosmonaut Pavel Vinogradov says , NASA has powerful anti-virus protection.

All sites visited are different. Scott Kelly said that he went there the same as earthlings. Kelly visited Twitter, Instagram, checked his bank accounts through online banking, and sometimes watched the video.