Awards & Nominations
AUAU has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Can You Hear Me Now?
Earth to Mars Communication Simulation
Summary
Many people don't truely grasp how far away Mars is from Earth and how communications as we know it would have to radically change. This tool aims provide anyone with an understanding of how far away the two planets are on any given date, by visually modelling how a simple request and response message transits between the two planets in real time.
How I Addressed This Challenge
Science communication is one of the key challenges we have here on Earth to help inform and educate the human population. The distance between Earth and Mars isn't fully understood or appreciated by many humans mainly due to the astronomically large numbers which are hard to relate to known concepts.
As more unmanned missions are sent to Mars (and in the future, manned missions), the information communications between Earth and Mars are becoming increasingly important. Regardless of how efficient our deep space communications technology advances, the latency will still fundamentally be limited by the speed of light. This project aims to give a real-time visual representation of that latency limitation.
This project consists of an interactive web page that provides a real-time simulation of the request and response times between Earth and Mars based on their respective orbits on a date selected by the user.
How I Developed This Project
Initially started by researching the different data that might be available to use for these calculations. Once proven to be feasible, a simple Python script was written to perform the necessary mathematical calculations when given a particular date.
This Python script was then incorporated into a JSON REST API running in a Python Flask web server deployed to the IBM Cloud. This API was fronted by a simple webpage with native JavaScript, styled by the Carbon Design System.
How I Used Space Agency Data in This Project
NASA web resources on the Deep Space Network (DSN), Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC), Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), Ka band communications, and X band communications were used to formulate an understanding of the state-of-the-art and where the communications technology is headed.
The project relies on the distance data set from The Sky Live (see references section) as that was available in a pre-computed and easily parseable format.
Project Demo
A 30 second demo can be found here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3r4ypbe5ya4s5g1/AADAfAUozoTkoterj29gW5-0a?dl=0
A live version of the interactive application can be found here: https://auau.au-syd.cf.appdomain.cloud/
Data & Resources
NASA. What is the Deep Space Network?(https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/heo/scan/services/networks/deep_space_network/about)
NASA. X-band Communications (https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/mission/communications/commxband/)
NASA. KA-band Communications (https://mars.nasa.gov/mro/mission/communications/commkaband/)
NASA. NASA Team Develops New Ka-Band Communications System to Break Through the Noise
The Sky Live - How Far Is Mars. Underlying pre-computed dataset used for planetary distances (https://theskylive.com/how-far-is-mars)
Federal Labs. Demonstration of Multi-Gigabit Per Second Data Rates Through Ka-Band Frequencies (https://federallabs.org/news/demonstration-of-multi-gigabit-per-second-data-rates-through-ka-band-frequencies)
NBN - Australian Broadband Data Demand: new peak in data demand (https://www.nbnco.com.au/corporate-information/media-centre/media-statements/data-demand-new-peak-in-data-demand)
IBM Cloud Python Flask demonstration app (https://github.com/IBM/python-flask-app)