Is There A Solution For High Bandwidth Deep Space Communication?
The Deep Space Network - or DSN - is NASA’s international array of giant radio antennas that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions, plus a few that orbit Earth. Apparently "When it comes to making a long-distance call, it's hard to top NASA's Deep Space Network. It’s the largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system in the world." says NASA. While that might be true for now that doesn’t change the fact that the Deep Space
Network's performance is pitiful. As seen in the graph below the data rates clearly must hinder NASA’s ability to view live data from multiple sources.
Data Collected on 7/6/2014
We don’t want to replace NASA’s DSN but rather revolutionize it, paired with our multi-point multi-band technology the DSN could potentially become the largest, highest performing wireless network ever created. This would bring huge potential for large interplanetary bandwidths, larger more sophisticated satellites and manned spacecraft which require much more bandwidth. Right now to communicate with outer solar system satellites and probes a dish on Earth must make direct contact with the device. The issue with that is the signal has to go through Earth’s atmosphere which severely degrades the signal quality. We can solve that by placing communication satellites in orbit to create a network above earth's atmosphere. The AEAN (Above Earth Atmosphere Network) can connect to other satellites with much better signal quality. And an added bonus is that the AEAN satellites aren’t mission specific so they can be used to support the network as a whole.
