14 DAY TRIAL // Conceivably, decades to centuries from now, the galaxy will become our extended home, in which planetary colonies will be commonplace. Communications will play a critical role in space exploration, and officials at NASA believe that an Interplanetary Internet (IPI) could make this easier.
The goal here is to produce a descendant of the current Internet, one that could operate unhindered over the vast expanses of the galaxy. Believe it or not, Internet signals are already traveling through space.
Some of the have even gotten as far as 39 light-years away from Earth. They were sent via microwave towers in 1969, when ARPANET, the Internet's predecessor, was barely coming online.
The email messages sent through those towers leaked into space as well, and they have long since passed the closest star system to our own, Alpha Centauri, Daily Galaxy reports. The star is located just 4 light-years away.
Experts operating with radiation-based signals say that those emails are probably buried in cosmic radio noise. They however add that a system could be devised to boost their strength, and make them permeate the galaxy.
Regardless of whether Internet data is sent via microwave towers or satellites, some of it leaks all the time, and makes it way into space. Establishing an Interplanetary Internet (IPI) will allow this to be done regularly.
Conceivably, the first step would be to connect spacecraft around the Moon, Mars, and elsewhere in the solar system, to each other. This could all be achieved this century, and early in the next one.
According to NASA, the future IPI could even act as a cosmic control tower, directing interplanetary spacecraft traffic with great ease, and with live input from a wide array of wireless sensors.
These devices could be spread all over the place, and fulfill numerous functions, such as for example keep track of near-Earth objects (NEO), study comets and asteroids, and searching for exoplanets, Daily Galaxy reports.
If we ever decide to expand our home base to extrasolar planets such as Gliese 581g, the IPI could become a standard communications protocol, experts believe. The Gliese 581 star system is located about 20 light-years away from Earth.
Additionally, the Interplanetary Internet's communication abilities could be expanded over the Universe via the use of quantum entanglement, a physical phenomenon that theoretically allows two particles to share the same properties over vast distances.