Calling Mars

Calling Mars| Can You Hear Me Now?

Can You Hear Me Now?

Human missions to Mars are moving from the realm of science fiction to science fact. Your challenge is to design an interactive application to explore the challenge of communicating with astronauts on Mars from Earth.

Summary

The aim of our project is to design an interface that will allow users on Earth to use any or all of the available communication methods on the planet to send and receive messages from astronauts and rovers on Mars all year round. We want our project to be a catalyst in paving the way for enabling mass interplanetary communication between people on Earth and future human settlements on Moon, Mars and beyond.

How We Addressed This Challenge

We have designed an application interface that will allow users on Earth to send messages to astronauts on Mars and receive response in the shortest possible time owing to distance between the 2 planets. The latency in two-way communication creates a blind spot, lasting several minutes, for men and equipment on Mars and Earth which can be narrowed but not completely overcome. The interface will allow users to create messages on their device in text, image, audio or video formats and transmit them to astronauts/rovers on Mars using the existing global Deep Space Network antennas and plausibly, the 2 optical sensor ground stations in Hawaii and Table Mountain, California. The messages will be transmitted and received using radio wave frequency in the X-band and K-band and Lasers in the infrared spectrum. Messages can also be sent directly to relay satellites orbiting Earth which in turn will transmit the signals to relay satellites orbiting Mars (MRO, Mars Odssey and MarCO).

How We Developed This Project

Inspiration

A study conducted by NASA on astronauts in the International Space Station in 2014 showed that a 50 seconds delay in communication frustrated the crew members and real-time communications with ground stations helped improve their performance and morale.

This study showed that real-time communication with Earth is quite essential for any manned mission to Mars or deep-space missions, in future. We deliberated within the team and came up with a story that inspired us in taking up this challenge.

A spacecraft with astronauts, Bob and Doug, lifts off on a bright sunny day. Destination of the mission is a distant world - Mars, a dusty and barren planet ,about 63 million km away from home (Earth), with an inhabitable atmosphere that comprises mostly of carbon-dioxide, nitrogen and argon.

The spacecraft gains altitude and attains escape velocity to overcome Earth's gravity and embark on its sojourn to the Red planet. The astronauts are in constant touch with ground control in real-time conversations. As days and weeks pass and the distance relative to Earth increases the astronauts begin to experience a delay in their communications with ground stations before the latency reaches a peak of nearly 20 minutes one-way, creating a 40 min window of radio silence before the astronauts can receive a response to their queries from ground stations on Earth.

Approach

Users can access a web-based or mobile application interface or a special custom device ,with minimal functionality, to send messages to Mars. The interface will allow users to create text, image, audio or video messages and transmit the data in 4MB chunks, using the existing Deep Space Network link or from any of the earth orbiting satellites, which can send the message to relay satellites in Mars orbit. Once the messages reach the satellites orbiting Mars it will be broadcast to astronauts and rovers on the red planet. The assumptions also takes into consideration relay satellites in the "B-orbit" of Mars, as proposed in a recent study by scientists at ESA, and 3 relay satellites at Lagrangian points L3, L4 and L5 in Earth's orbit. Satellite in L3 is unstable and will require capability in correcting its position as it can drift away, owing to gravitational influences of other planets. However, the satellite in L3 can be a primary relay point along with satellites in L4 and L5 during solar conjunction, when Mars will be nearly 2.5AU away from Earth and site-to-site communications will be blocked due to interference from the Sun.

Tools and Development

The wireframe design and simulation was done using Adobe Illustrator tool.

Our preferred technology stack for development of the application interface would have been -

A microservice based application using React/iOS/Android Mobile interface as front-end with Express.js, Node.js as web application and a NoSQL database like MongoDB as back-end, running on a cloud. The images of front-end and web-app components will run inside a Docker container with Kubernetes to manage the container orchestration. The microservices will be exposed as APIs which will allow it to be integrated as part of any custom application.

Challenges

Project team discussion and collaboration in a virtual meeting environment added to difficulty in deliberation resulting in repeated rounds of discussions which consumed more time.
Absence of seasoned software development skills within the team limited the chances of developing a working prototype of our application.
Lack of exposure and experience to developments in the field of space and astronomy required every team member to refer and read through details shared under the "Resources" section of the challenge.

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) by NASA, also known as optical communications, encodes data onto a beam of light, which is then transmitted between spacecraft and eventually to Earth terminals. This providedinsights on the latest developments being tested to improve and ensure more accurate and high-speed connectivity required to maintain communications for deep space manned missions. It helped us understand that optical communications will revolutionize space-based science and exploration capabilities by supplying data rates up to 100 times faster than current RF systems. Optical communications can also:

Provide higher data rates than a radio-frequency (RF) system requiring the same mass and power
Require less mass and power than an RF system to provide the same data rate
Eliminate issues such as microwave spectral congestion, spectrum allocation and constrained bandwidth that are commonplace with RF communications

Proposal on a possible solution to resolve the crucial communications challenge with Mars for future manned missions was proposed by scientists at ESA as part of their recent research and study. As per the study, the solution required a pair of relay satellites to be placed in a special orbit , called "B-orbit", around Mars which will be in full view from both Mars and Earth all year round, even during the solar conjunction. This will ensure astronauts on Mars will continue to stay in touch with Earth. The satellites should be equipped with cutting edge electric propulsion powered by the satellite's solar panels and use ion thrusters with xenon gas as propellant to maintain their orbits against the gravitational drag caused by the Sun and other planets and moons.