Wi-Fi, Now Available On the ISS

Grant Henninger writes "Rejoice! The next time you have an extra $20 million and decide to visit the International Space Station you won't need to leave the window to tell all your friends how cool it is. The ISS now has a new Wi-Fi network, so all you'll need to do is fire up Twitterrific and announce how much better you are than your Earth-based friends."

And we already know who is the ISP

It has to be AT&T.

Can't wait to see the bills [wftv.com] on this one.

Re:And we already know who is the ISP

Funny you should mention that.

A /. article a few months ago found [slashdot.org] that sending a text message is about 4 times as expensive (per kilobyte) as retrieving data from the Hubble.

Re:And we already know who is the ISP

sending a text message is about 4 times as expensive (per kilobyte) as retrieving data from the Hubble.

Well then... given it's tax dollars, they probably implemented the wifi link via text messages :-)

Re:And we already know who is the ISP

Actually, the latency between ISS and anywhere on earth should theoretically be no worse than roughly double the time it would take to make a trip halfway around the earth via fiber. Remember, geostationary satellites have latency issues because they're about 28,000 miles away from Earth. The ISS is only about 200 miles up... approximately the distance between Miami and Orlando, or Paris and London. The only reason I even factored in as much time as I did is the fact that ISS moves relative to the earth, so in order to avoid breaking TCP/IP and give it an apparent fixed IP route to the rest of the internet, all traffic to and from it would have to pass through a single network point somewhere (probably Houston), then be forwarded via fiber to an uplink somewhere within the ISS's line of sight at that moment. In fact, it wouldn't surprise me if the ISS's internet connectivity actually is implemented using more or less off the shelf cellular data technology (using NASA's frequencies, with higher-power transceivers spaced further apart, but the same general idea as CDMA or GPRS data). Then again, to cut costs, they might very well have implemented internet connectivity on the ISS by just adding two or three tracking dishes to it, and using the same satellites as VSAT internet, which WOULD subject them to the same drawbacks as terrestrial customers. God, can you imagine the headlines if ISS ended up getting FAP'ed?!? :D

War-orbiting

Alright, who is going to be the first to start the new war-orbiting trend?

I wonder if it is an unsecured wireless network. Does being far above anyone else who could access your wireless network count as security through obscurity?

NASA will probably cooperate

You just know that NASA will probably cooperate with a stunt like this. Heck, they may even hold a contest for engineering students: "Who can be the first to ping our wifi network from a ground station and hold the signal from horizon to horizon?"

Winning team gets a photo-op with NASA engineers, bragging rights, and job interviews when they graduate.

Runners-up have to be content with $250 cash prize and a promise NASA will actually read their resumes.

Re:NASA will probably cooperate

I don't think a Pringles cantenna is going to be sufficient here... anyone got a spare grain silo laying around?

Re:NASA will probably cooperate

Actually, you might be wrong. As contests go, this would be fairly cool. There is some gear you can buy for telescopes that might do the trick. The ISS won't track across the sky in quite the same manner as a distant galaxy, but I'm sure it can be adapted to work. One cantenna might not be enough given the normal anomalies that plague people trying to communicate wirelessly through the atmosphere but then again, if you had several of them, spaced appropriately, all tracking the ISS you might be able to pull enough sig-2-noise to pull it off. I'm also reasonably certain that such arrays already exist, if configured slightly differently for different uses. It would be a good RF engineering project for colleges. 'more' is better, not bigger is better, in this case. I'd like to see this contest happen.

Hams regularly talk with the ISS....

, which hosts an onboard amateur station using the callsign NA1SS:

http://www.arrl.org/ARISS/ [arrl.org]

Many of the astronauts have ham radio licenses.

Re:War-orbiting

I can only imagine. The ISS will get hit with a lawsuit by the RIAA because some freeloading college kids are accessing their network to download music.

Extra $20 million

The next time you have an extra $20 million...all you'll need to do is fire up Twitterrific and announce how much better you are than your Earth-based friends

The next time I have an extra $20 million, I won't need Twitterific or even a visit to the ISS to let my friends know how much better I am than them. I'll hire people to follow my friends around town to let them know that fact on an hourly basis.

If I may suggest...

...a slight upgrade to your plan?

Hire SUPERMODELS instead of mere "people".
You can thank me for this small and yet brilliant upgrade by paying me a small sum of US$ 181829.

No mention of internet connectivity

There is nothing inherent in the phrase Wi-Fi that mandates that a network is Internet-connected. Indeed, nothing in the "article" suggests any access to the Internet from the station. This appears to just be an extension of their existing LAN.

Network Stumbler

That would explain why every 90 minutes or so "ISS" pops up on my available networks and then promptly disappears.

Re:Network Stumbler

Can I borrow your antenna?

But you will have to speak Russian

I thought there are fears that once the Shuttles no longer service the ISS in 2010, then access to the ISS will be limited to nations that can say "Da, you can have Georgia" in Russian.

So your friends will have to accept you talking through a Russian interpreter. This may well improve the conversation. I mean, how often can you say 'The earth is a blue and white ball' without getting boring. Whereas, a mistranslation such as 'Why on earth are your balls blue and white?' will at least help.

Is it free?

My 20 mil contract does not say anything about WiFi. Should I buy a cup of coffee to use it?

wifi network ~= internet connection

contrary to what the summary suggests, wifi doesn't mean internet connection.

Sounds pretty cool but...

Shouldn't they have fiber by now?

That's what they get for trusting the U.S telcos to deliver.

Hmm, it'd be a stretch...but might be doable.

It looks like it might actually be possible to connect to ISS wifi from earth. The ISS is around 350km above the surface, and current records for surface to surface links are a little bit larger than that [cnet.com].

The surface to surface number is for two custom endpoints, not one standard, one custom, doesn't have to deal with the ionosphere, and was between two stationary locations; but it suggests that the challenge isn't insurmountable. A radio astronomer could probably eat this one for breakfast.

First Message

To: Gfnnrzx
From: Plftspnk
Subject: New WiFi Hot Spot

Hey dude! I was cruising thru the wasteland in my saucer and I found this great open hot spot. Its right near that crazy pile of junk orbiting planet Irth. Just pull up behind them, so they won't see your ship and you can log your laptop onto the Irth Internet and download lots of cool homosapien p0rn. Also, log onto this site called Slashdot and post something about welcoming alien overlords. They'll get a kick out of it.

Later, dude.

P.S.: What's a lap, anyway?

Re:First Message

Sure, why not. It was established already in Independence Day that aliens use IPv4, so they should just be able to hook right up.

Re:First Message

Damnit, we're running out fast enough as it is!

TEH ALIENS ARE GONNA STEAL ALL OUR ADDRESSSPACE!!! /doomsday

Re:China?

Hey, on the plus side it's pretty much the only thing available for wardrivers in the area.

Re:Do they have an Internet connection?

you already can... get a ham license and a 2 meter radio and packet TNC.

I send message to the astronauts on the ISS on a regular basis. you can leave a message in their TNC if they are not live chatting.