Space Station Astronauts Gain Internet Access

cyclone96 writes "Internet access on the International Space Station went live this morning. The crew now has full browsing capability via a special LAN and the Ku-band data link on the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite network, as described in the NASA press release. Flight Engineer T. J. Creamer used the access to post the first tweet from orbit about 7 hours ago. Previous astronaut tweets had been posted by a third party on the ground via email."

Great...

[Pojut]

...now they are gonna be so busy lolcatting and 4channing it up that nothing is gonna get done.

GG.

Re:Great...

[Shatteredstar]

Or playing WoW. "Sorry guys I can't raid tonight, gotta go do a spacewalk to fix a solar panel."

Re:Great...

[Pojut]

Or playing WoW. "Sorry guys I can't do the spacewalk to fix the solar panel, got a raid tonight."

fixed :D

Re:

[happy_place]

Don't let'em set up their own web server. They probably don't want the spacestation slashdotted...

Re:

[Skuld-Chan]

Can you imagine the latency?

Re:

[MBGMorden]

Not as bad as you'd think. Certainly no worse, and possibly better, than satellite service provided to ground based customers. We have someone in our guild that plays WoW over satellite and her ping is typically 1000-1200ms. Bad, but not unplayable.

Re:

[Mr. Freeman]

There's also the fact that this isn't a commercial ISP. This is a purpose built (ish) system. Their latency could be anything from 20 ms to 5 seconds depending on just how they are doing this.

Re:

[Skuld-Chan]

I dunno - when my lag gets up to 1200 ms - it feels like I'm playing in jello, minus all the fun of actually swimming around in jello.

Re:

[sabt-pestnu]

Killer latency, dude. Maybe your hearth point should be in Ironforge, not Dalaran...

Re:

[Sabalon]

AH in IF, so it's kinda busy.
Exodar should be a safe bet.

Re:

[Hurricane78]

With that ping, I highly doubt it.

Re:Great...

[Hylandr]

Fire up EVE ONLINE !! From SPACE !!

Re:

[Pojut]

You just divided by zero! [wordpress.com]

Re:

[DJ DeFi]

Is that like playing the Sims on Earth?

Re:

[mcgrew]

Most of the astronauts are nerds. How long before they're posting to slashdot from outer space?

Re:Great...

[ArsonSmith]

SPACE POST!!!

Re:

[EdZ]

Wait, an incredible obscure image macro is now actually relevant? Crass humour is prescient! [imagehost.org]

Re:

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

...now they are gonna be so busy lolcatting and 4channing it up that nothing is gonna get done

Heh. That was posted during normal work hours.

ISO country code

[logophage]

Out of curiosity, is there an ISO country code for low Earth orbit?

Re:

[garcia]

Yeah, WOY as in We Own You.

Re:ISO country code

[sakdoctor]

Get your .co.moon domain name today!
Grab your name before someone squats on your moon.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:ISO country code

[Dancindan84]

No, but EO (earth orbit) and LO (low orbit) are both available.

http://www.iso.org/iso/iso-3166-1_decoding_table [iso.org]

Re:ISO country code

[amicusNYCL]

I think "HI" or "UP" would be appropriate.

Re:ISO country code

[ehiris]

HI should be reserved for Dutch-style coffee shops.

Re:

[AmiMoJo]

How about a TLD for the Earth, with a view to an interplanetary internet: .earth .terraprime .sol3 .neo (near Earth orbit)

We made the mistake of not considering future needs when deciding on the 4 byte IPv4 address system :)

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

Already being worked on: http://www.ipnsig.org/home.htm [ipnsig.org]

Re:

[IdleTime]

I-can-see-russia-from-my-space-station is also available!

OT - your sig

[mcgrew]

If you mod me down, I *will* introduce you to my sister!

You just invited 100k nerds to date your sister!

What's her phone number?

Re:

[Late Adopter]

Only if I can be the first to register "one.up" =)

Or "look.up", which I would promptly sell to Google for a boatload of cash.

(Or "movin.on.up"?)

Re:

[sconeu]

It's the "International Space Station". Seems to me that iss.int would be good.

Re:

[Tacvek]

The There is no legal entity created by treaty named ISS, nor is there the space station a UN agency or Organization, nor has the ISS been granted Observer Status at the UN, so it does not qualify for the int TLD.

Re:

[jroysdon]

The International domain .int would fit better and isn't limited/bounded by geographic locations nor even political boundaries. iss.int would work. There is esa.int [esa.int] already, for instance.

Space, the final frontier

[gmuslera]

where no botnet/porn/rickrolling has gone before.

Re:

[bughunter]

Man that would be one expensive pr0n habit.

300 Megabit/sec Single Access (Ku band) TDRSS service was priced at USD$180 per minute in 1997 [justia.com]. Adjusting for inflation [usinflatio...ulator.com], that would be over $240 in 2009, not accounting for likely price increases due to the growth in demand for satellite communications bandwidth during the GWOT [darpa.mil].

I won't even mention the rather odious web content filtering that NASA uses these days...

Re:

[ArsonSmith]

How much is that in 2009 minutes though?

Re:

[Mr. Freeman]

You have to remember though that this isn't being paid for by NASA necessarily. I mean, they own the bloody link. They or the government probably owns any satellites that are used in the link.

Re:

[bughunter]

Considering the overwhelming demand for hi-bandwidth satcom links these days, far in excess of the supply, it's statistically certain that there's someone who wants that Ku-band frequency slot at that time and who is willing to pay for it.

I don't doubt for a second that NASA beancounters aren't billing that opportunity cost to whatever JSC account pays for astronaut porn^H^H^H^Hexpenses.

Re:

[Chris Burke]

To boldly come...

Infection in 3.. 2..

[TubeSteak]

Remember the last time(s) the Space Station's laptops got infected?

Re:

[Magic5Ball]

RTFA: "During periods when the station is actively communicating with the ground using high-speed Ku-band communications, the crew will have remote access to the Internet via a ground computer. The crew will view the desktop of the ground computer using an onboard laptop and interact remotely with their keyboard touchpad."

It's difficult, but not impossible, to spread malware via RDP or VNC or X or whatever.

Re:

[222]

They have remote control of a PC at mission control. Other than screen data / mouse & keyboard input, no communication is done directly with ISS.

First email

[SnarfQuest]

Dear sirs:

I am the son of the Eternal Living God of Mars, who was recently assinated by opposition forces. I cincerely need you help to transfer 5,000,000 Gomlets (Five million gromlets) from my planet to yours...

Can it stream YouTube?

[ICLKennyG]

But the internet is provided through a contract with Verizon Wireless, the $49.99Million/mo 'Unlimited' plan includes 100Mb of data 25k/25k transfer speeds and 1 email account.

So they RDP to a ground computer....

[jpedlow]

Great, they RDP to a ground computer and go about their way. 3 problems I can forsee: 1. Somewhat laggy screen redraw 2. Possible RDPviewer remote code exploits? Then there'll be the first goatxe in space. 3. Line of sight problems, how is the handoff handled once the station goes over the horizon? Cool, though, glad to hear they've got the capability... Lets get them 100meg access, the RIAA and MPAA cant get them in SPACE!

Re:So they RDP to a ground computer....

[dreamchaser]

I know you're joking and yes I found it funny. You gave me a chuckle. I just wanted to point out that they only use RDP when the link is being used for voice/video/data communication between the ISS and the ground. The rest of the time they can use it like any other LAN based Internet, meaning they can use their personal laptops without resorting to RDP.

First tweet

[elrous0]

Still no aliens. Keeping vigilant.

Re:First tweet

[SnarfQuest]

Still no aliens. Please send more people with large heads. Definately no brain eating aliens here.

Re:

[jbezorg]

Alex made me laugh. Drink came out nose fast. Spun alot. New drinking game: must do shot every rotation. Set rec. of 5.3rpm. Very dizzy...

Re:

[DarthVain]

I really hate Sergei. He really pisses me off.

Re:

[DarthVain]

Space madness OK now. Snarf wants in airlock, sec...

Latency?

[peragrin]

I wonder if there is too much latency for something other than web browsing? Say you tube ormore likely porn videos.

Re:Latency?

[amicusNYCL]

The latency probably isn't as bad as one would expect. Sure, it seems far, but it's a straight shot. Also, a link between US and Europe would be significantly farther.

Re:

[TooMuchToDo]

It *is* lower than geosync, so it's probably comparable to Iridium ping times.

Re:

[demonlapin]

TFA says it goes via TDRS, which is in geosynchronous orbit. Round trip is just under 45000 miles.

Re:

[antifoidulus]

I shudder to think what kind of mess porn in space would leave.... Nothing quite like floating around in day old cosmonaut cum...

Re:

[snspdaarf]

New arrival at ISS: "Does this airlock smell vaguely like chlorine to you?"

That Explains the Chatroom Comment this Morning:

[BJ_Covert_Action]

When I posted, "a/s/l check?" to 'Fun Single's this morning I got: "45/m/Rp = 6714 km, i = 51.6419 degrees. Please chat with me, it's really lonely up here," as a response.

Space tweets?

[BenoitRen]

So they finally get Internet access, and one of the first things they use it for is a tweet on Twitter? Talk about useless.

Search Engine made of People.

[headkase]

Seriously, need to make a square filter fit in a round processing machine? Hell, with the followers of that twitter account: darn useful. Just because you don't understand it doesn't make real-time useless :P

Re:

[erayd]

He's talking about the Apollo 13 mission CO2 filters.

Re:Space tweets?

[Grygus]

When funding is on the line, PR becomes important work.

Re:

[BitZtream]

Yea? Well this sort of thing blows my support for NASA funding. I'm all for spending my tax dollars or research and exploration, I'm not OK with it being used so some douche bags can tweet.

They can wait the to get back to Earth rather than spend hundreds of dollars to show everyone they are a twit.

Re:

[Hurricane78]

What public? Nobody reads Twitter feeds.
Isn’t that some Internet rule?
If not, we should call it “rule 140”. :)

Re:

[Mushdot]

Tweeting first, what next... Spacebook?

Re:

[TobyWong]

I'm going to post this on my YouFace page immediately! FingerTag me for details.

Re:

[NeoSkandranon]

Yeah because there are all those other vital things they could have done first right? Give me a break.

Re:

[rdnetto]

Dude, these guys are *in space*. If anyone has anything interesting to tweet about, it would be them.

Countdown to...

[Zordak]

Yesterday:

Houston, please repeat. Right. Yes, the new solar panel has been successfully installed. ISS out.

Today:

hstn, lol wut?1? ya we pwnd sol pan1 suxrz1!!

Yes, but ...

[dkleinsc]

the lag is really going to suck.

But seriously, good work, engineering types who worked on this.

Re:Yes, but ...

[marcansoft]

The space station is at most 460km above the Earth. Not counting bouncing around support satellites, the lag is only going to be a millisecond or two. People have this misconception that the ISS is far from the Earth, while in reality it's not that high up.

Even if they have to bounce through a satellite in GEO (which is some 100 times farther away than the ISS and the farthest you're going to get for comms), that's, say, 300ms Earth-GEO-ISS, so the total ping time would be 600ms. No good for Counter-Strike, but still quite tolerable.

Re:

[mcgrew]

The space station is at most 460km above the Earth

To put that into perspective, I'm in Springfield, about 200 miles or more from Chicago. When the ISS is directly overhead it's closer to Springfield than Chicago is.

Re:

[BitZtream]

Yes, from a purely theoretical 'it takes this long for the signal to travel round trip' then you get 600ms. However these are low data rate, high error rate, heavy protocols to correct for that bouncing not just point to point but through massive amounts of electronics.

Theory and reality are entirely different things. RDP over that link would be pure hell.

Of course every time I hear something about how NASA handles networking it makes me realize that they really need to throw out everyone who has any part

Terrible idea

[DoofusOfDeath]

In a week it's going to look like a snow globe in there!

Re:Terrible idea

[Leafheart]

Why do you think they packed extra socks this time?

RFC1149

[Sponge Bath]

I guess the vacuum of space was too much of a challenge to overcome with RFC1149 IP datagrams.

Finally: Space Pirates!

[ArbitraryDescriptor]

They need to hop on ye ole usenet and download something.

Wasted opportunity

[Evildonald]

I can't believe with all that time they've got up there, they wasted their first tweet not writing

That's one small tweet for man. One giant tweet for mankind.

Re:

[ehud42]

Which after years of controversy and intense packet analysis would finally be corrected as "That's one small tweet for a man. One giant tweet for mankind".

Re:

[ArsonSmith]

It's past tense:

One small twat for a man. One giant twat for man kind.

Re:

[ArsonSmith]

You've been verbed!!

Online Ordering

[crsuperman34]

Thank you for your online order; Online Pizza Delivery status: "6-12 months, Pending Space Shuttle availability; NEW click here for 2 day super saver shipping"

Twitter might be good for NASA.

[fahrbot-bot]

Thinking about it, twitter might be a good way for NASA to get the youngsters interested. Many people seemingly have the attention-span of a tweet now, but NASA things tend to be, let's say, "more involved" (meaning longer, methodical and boring), but that's the reality of safe space travel.

Anything that gets more people interested and supportive is a good thing - even if it's something as inane as Twitter.

Reply to the first tweet.

[camperdave]

Thinking about it, twitter might be a good way for NASA to get the youngsters interested. Many people seemingly have the attention-span of a tweet now, but NASA things tend to be, let's say, "more involved" (meaning longer, methodical and boring), but that's the reality of safe space travel.

Reply to the first tweet from space: tl;dr [urbandictionary.com]

Previous access

[twistah]

Previous astronaut tweets had been posted by a third party on the ground via email.

So, then, they did have SOME access before?

Re:

[Stupendoussteve]

Of course they did, just not to the Internet. This is certainly not the first data connection to the ISS, probably just lower on the priorities.

ISS Orbit WiFi Record

[starbugs]

src: wikipedia

(Wi-Fi) distance records (using non-standard devices) include 382 km (237 mi) in June 2007.

(ISS) maintained at an orbit between 278 km (173 mi) and 460 km (286 mi) altitude.

If their laptops don't have their wi-fi cards removed, that would make for some out-of-this-world wardriving.

This ushers in a whole new swarm of patents.....

[NiteShaed]

Instead of filing a patent by just appending "on the internet" to every idea anyone's ever had, now they'll be adding "in space". I can see it now: "Business process patent describing the sales of books to previously known customers -- on the internet -- in space". There you go Amazon, this one's for you.....

Full browsing is not Internet

[VincenzoRomano]

In my lingo "internet access" is the full (or a reasonable part) of the TCP/IP stack. Something like all TCP and UDP ports in both directions plus SCPT (transport), ICMP and IPSec (internet layer).
What the astronatus have is an HTTP proxy server!

Facebook

[DarthVain]

They better watch what they post, otherwise Huston might find out... What goes on in the ISS, stays on the ISS, unless you post it on facebook.

I wonder if their connection is being monitored closely?

In related news...

[gyrogeerloose]

...porn servers all over the Internet report a record number of downloads. Film at eleven.

Using RDP?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Isn't RDP's weak point in the initial authentication (which is why RDP over an open wifi network is a bad idea)? If so, isn't this just begging for someone to go for the ULTIMATE man in the middle attack?

And, if that happens... will the hacker's first task be to tweet "How are you gentlemen!!"

Re:

[BitZtream]

Yes, because the datalink they use is an open network with no builtin security ... and also, its the year 2002 and we've not upgraded any bits of the RDP protocol or the client or server.

You should probably look into the random crap you read on the Internet rather than believe it straight off the bat as true.

Re:

[RorschachUK]

Maybe the ISS has already been slashdotted... watch out below!

Re:

[Totenglocke]

Apparently they have some major lag - you'll see their response in a day or two! ;)

Wait!

[headkase]

On the billion to one chance, what if that was one of the astronauts!? Then we'd have to have the first Troll from orbit... and.. Well, never mind ;)

Re:

[Tokerat]

That was the first tweet sent from a person in orbit. It was relayed to a ground controller who actually did the posting. Today's tweet was the first one actually transmitted from space.

Re:

[Ipeunipig]

I did find it ironic that the "first" internet usage in space was from a man named Creamer.

Re:

[ae1294]

my god man, surely you must be joking as orbital botnet bombardment was outlawed outright in the space treaty of 2247!

Re:

[bughunter]

Egad, that sucks. God forbid they get even five minutes of private browsing or email time.

I guess they'll have continue to do what I was forced to do as a young nerd in summer camp, with no access to news stands from which to lift a copy of Juggs or Club, nor even the sight of any actual females to commit to short-term visual memory: sketch my own porn.