Feature Story

June 30, 2004

By Jenny Carless, News@Cisco

A Cisco Systems router launched into orbit has been successfully tested and demonstrated by an international government and private sector collaboration, showing how Internet Protocol (IP) can be used to communicate with satellite payloads in space. Cisco acted as a catalyst in bringing organizations in the defense, civil and commercial worlds together to test and demonstrate its router.

"Satellites are already passing IP traffic among their ground-based networking elements," explains Rick Sanford, director of the Global Space Initiatives group at Cisco. "Satellite users and operators are already using IP in their networks, so it makes sense that the satellites themselves use IP, too."

Communicating with Satellites

In September 2003, a Cisco 3251 Mobile Access Router was launched into low Earth orbit onboard the UK-DMC (Disaster Monitoring Consortium) satellite, built and operated by Surrey Satellite Technology, Ltd. (SSTL) of Guildford, England. In June 2004, after lying dormant while the satellite's primary payloads were used, the router successfully completed a number of tests that demonstrate the effectiveness of IP communication to satellites.

While the satellite's primary purpose is providing images of the Earth's environment, the router is part of a secondary experiment that involves a wide range of groups, including SSTL, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army, General Dynamics and others.

The router tests form part of a "Virtual Mission Operations Center" (VMOC), an initiative of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Rapid Acquisition Net Centricity, executed as a collaborative experiment among the Air Force, the Army and NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, and using software by General Dynamics. The software used IP to acquire satellite telemetry; request images from SSTL's satellite dynamically; and perform real-time access to on-orbit satellite equipment (the Cisco router).

The VMOC camp, at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, specified areas of the Earth and requested photographs, which were taken by the satellite and delivered from SSTL using standard IP. The software relied on mobile routing to communicate across the Internet via NASA Glenn to SSTL's ground station and up to the Cisco router onboard the satellite.

"Up until now, the space community has traditionally built proprietary gear. So these tests have been important because they represent the first demonstration of a commercial network device - a router - on a satellite in space," says Sanford.

The Benefits of Using IP in Satellite Communications

IP-based technologies and hardware can bring a number of benefits to satellite communications:

• Speeding the development/design process of satellite communications and implementing increased networking capabilities, thereby helping to enable secured remote access to cost-effective unmanned ground stations
• Improving satellites' ability to interoperate with ground components
• Introducing more flexibility into satellite design, so that satellites can meet user needs more quickly

"As the space and ground infrastructures merge, it becomes increasingly important that there's a common frame of reference - IP - to help enable end-to-end quality of service and a common framework for management," says Sanford.

NASA hopes to be able to save as much as 25 percent of the cost of future spacecraft development by implementing an architecture similar to the one tested with the VMOC. Their goal is to develop satellite systems that are as easy to integrate as networked printers, rather than the difficult path encountered with today's proprietary systems. NASA also expects significant operations improvements with the full-scale adoption of IP, such as rapid adaptation to change and improved interoperability.

The Power of the Network - in Space

Collaborations such as the one responsible for these recent tests show a commitment by Cisco to working with others in exploring new methodologies for the aerospace industries. They also demonstrate the power of the network - even in space.

Satellites are making increasing use of Internet technology, and Cisco is playing a key role in the ongoing evolution towards space-based networking.

"We believe terrestrial protocols and standards can be reused in space environments, so that the space network doesn't have to be a separate thing," says Lloyd Wood, space initiatives manager for the Cisco Space Team. "These successful demonstrations and tests clearly validate that position."

Jenny Carless is a freelance writer based in Santa Cruz, CA.