The project’s purpose is to create an interactive application to get people to understand the complexity of communicating in space. People today may be satisfied to communicate with their friends on social media, but what if people discovered to be curious about communicating in space? For the population in the present, it may be irrelative, but in the future, it can be the key to connect to other lives in our galaxy. In the future with higher bandwidth and progress in science, we may stream the solar system and HDTV from Mars to Earth. 

The created application is interactive and shows different types of scenarios of communicating between Mars and Earth. To tackle the problem with radio shadow at different times of the year we used Lagrange points in our solution. The first scenario is conjunction, when sun is between Earth and Mars. The second scenario is when Mars is far away from Earth with the distance of 1,5 AU. The last and third scenario is when Mars and Earth are close to each other with the distance of 0,6AU. The purpose of different types of positions is to show the user how the communication varies and how it is traveling and uses Lagrange’s points. 

When a scenario is chosen the user can choose if they want to send from Mars to Earth or the other way round. The user can also choose which type of message they will send. Depending on which message the user likes to send, the message has a different data size and priority. Thereafter the user can choose between two types of transmissions, Deep Space Optical Communication (DSOC) or Deep Space Networking (DSN) that is selectable for the user. When the user sends a message in a scenario they will be informed by facts about their transmission. 

Time Delay 

The time delay has been a central discussion under the project. When communicating in space, you can not deny the time delay. Nowadays it takes between 5-20 minutes for a radio signal to travel between Mars and Earth depending on how the planets are positioned to each other. 

Deep Space Networking (DSN)

NASA’s Deep Space Networking is able to handle long-distance communication. NASA has enormous antennas that can provide different types of communication to spacecraft missions. DSN also helps to understand and observe the universe with radar and radio. The communication from Earth to Mars with DSN mostly occurs by radio waves. The challenge for us was to adapt to how the signal would reach back and forward to Mars regarding radio shadow and delay. 

Deep Space Optical Communication (DSOC)

NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communication is still under development but NASA has made huge progress forward. The performance of communication will increase from 10 to 100 times because it uses laser communication. Laser communication has lower requirements regarding size, weight, and power. The challenge for us was to figure out when we can use DSOC because of the importance of the direction of the laser. The laser beam has to be exactly directed for communication both ways and works best without cloudy weather.

Lagrange points

Because of the problem with radio shadow we took advantage of Lagrange points to find a solution to always be able to communicate. When the Earth and Mars are at opposite sides of the sun we can use satellites placed in the Lagrange points to communicate around the sun. There are five Lagrange’s points placed and we are taking advantage of L4 and L5 that are placed on each side of Earth.

Achievements

The achievement that we hope for is to show the complexity of communication between Earth and Mars. Also inform the user of different types of solutions to the problem. The main achievement we would like to reach is that the user starts to imagine the problem and maybe finds another way to attach the challenge of communication.