When the first astronauts land on Mars, maybe in a couple of decades, they’ll need some way to communicate. They’ll need to talk with each other — and mission control back on Earth — using equipment on and around Mars.
Plus, they’ll no doubt want to email loved ones, keep their playlists up-to-date or stream new episodes of their favorite shows. And setting up a Wi-Fi connection to Earth’s internet won’t be an option. Earth is simply too far from Mars.
The distance between the two planets depends on where they are in their orbits around the sun. In fact, it can range from around 55 million to 400 million kilometers (34 million to 250 million miles). So even data traveling at the speed of light would take four to 24 minutes to make a one-way trip.
That means a quick ping from Mars to mission control on Earth is out of the question. And a WhatsApp call home? Forget about it.
There’s also the problem of “solar conjunction.” This is when Earth and Mars are on opposite sides of the sun, which happens every two years or so. During solar conjunction, the sun blocks all signals between the two planets.
No known strategy can overcome the time lag in signals traveling between Earth and Mars. Or make it possible to send messages through the sun.
But researchers are working on ways to make communication on the Red Planet more like it is on Earth. And at least one team has wondered: What if Mars had its own internet?
A good communications setup is crucial for human missions to Mars, says Claire Parfitt. She’s a systems engineer with the European Space Agency, or ESA, in Noordwijk, Netherlands. Basically, people on Mars will need some way to get online, she says.
“At the moment,” she adds, “we’re in the early stages of working out what that means.”
How Mars ‘chats’ work today
Several space agencies have spacecraft on or near Mars….
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