I just saw an [article](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-8988053/NASA-astronaut-Victor-Glover-shares-video-SPACE.html) about Victor Glover’s first video from space. But some Facebook troll want to ruin the experience by saying “Geez he must have a good telecommunication deal to get service up there! I can’t get it in my bathroom!”
I know that somehow they “beam” signals to NASA receivers, and those are different from what the local telco providers have, but how are they able to do this? Can the astronauts really post real-time videos on social media from a mobile device?
In: Technology
There’s a network of satellites in geosynchronous orbit as well as ground based stations that form a network specifically for supporting space missions that’s run by NASA. It is actually just called the “Space Network.”
The main difference between this network and a normal communications satellite setup, besides just not being pointed at the ground is that the satellites are able to track fast moving objects in space.
As for the actual data that goes over this it’s basically just a big LAN with a connection to the public internet the somewhere in a NASA control center. The ISS itself has WiFi for cell phones and tablets and such. As well as wired ethernet for experiments and stationary equipment. Also the same network is used for controlling and monitoring experiments on the ISS remotely from ground stations.
Like the last spacewalk I was watching was literally just running ethernet cable to a webcam :D. Just, in space.
They are connected to the internet through a network of satellites. The satellites connect the ISS to a computer in Houston, from which they can connect to the internet.
They effectively have satellite internet linked to WiFi on the station. The ISS was upgraded a couple years ago to have 600 Mbps service which is really good, but that supports *all* of their operations from mission command to software updates to personal communications.
There are a series of satellites up in higher orbit that connect to the ISS and to ground stations managed by NASA and the other space agencies. The ground stations are hooked into the main Mission Control network and also feed general internet traffic through to the station.
Their connection is really high latency like most satellite networks so its not great for gaming, but fine if you just want to upload a prerecorded video. For really big files (aka movies) they still like to send up DVDs or a hard drive with them because its more time and resource efficient.
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