How The Internet Could Go From Cyberspace To Outer Space
Posted on Friday, April 13, 2007
BBC brings the following story:
Net Reaches Out To Final Frontier
A programme to kick-start the use of internet communications in space has been announced by the US government.
The Department of Defense's Iris project will put an internet router in space by the start of 2009. It will allow voice, video and data communications for US troops using standards developed for the internet. Eventually Iris could extend the net into space, allowing data to flow directly between satellites, rather than sending it via ground stations."Iris is to the future of satellite-based communications what Arpanet was to the creation of the internet in the 1960s," said Don Brown, of Intelsat General, one of the companies who will build the platform.
Arpanet (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the predecessor of the internet, was developed by the United States Department of Defense.