Project Sponsor: NASA JPL

Project Managers and Primary Project Contact:

Jordan Leigh Torgerson

Description

This project, developed in collaboration with NASA JPL, aims to build a functional interplanetary email system by leveraging Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) through NASA’s Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION) software. Traditional internet protocols like TCP/IP and SMTP rely on continuous, low-latency connections—conditions that are unrealistic in the high-latency, disruption-prone environment of space. By adapting standard email infrastructure to operate over DTN, this project enables resilient communication between celestial bodies, using store-and-forward techniques to handle long delays and intermittent connectivity.

A testbed of Raspberry Pis simulates the planetary networking environment, with separate nodes representing Earth and Mars, that mimics deep space transmission. The testbed uses mail servers and DNS servers to simulate discrete internets on separate worlds that are only connected through DTN, and Linux Traffic Control is used to simulate space-like conditions including delay, bandwidth limitations, and packet loss. The software developed by the project focuses on transferring and slightly modifying MIME messages or batch SMTP objects and relies on external mail programs to provide and handle that data. The goal is to validate a system that can reliably support interplanetary email and lay the groundwork for future space communication infrastructure.

Objective

Build a prototype interplanetary email system using the ION implementation of DTN to send email between nodes on Earth and nodes on a celestial body.

Team Layout