Communications and Navigation

Talking Back from Alpha Centauri

January 23, 2013

Back when I was working on my Centauri Dreams book, JPL’s James Lesh told me that the right way to do communications from Alpha Centauri was to use a laser. The problem is simple enough: Radio signals fall off in intensity with the square of their distance, so that a spacecraft twice as far from [...]

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Pulsar Navigation: Beacons in the Darkness

January 17, 2013

In a world of search engines, GPS and always-on connectivity, I sometimes wonder what’s happening to serendipity. Over the years, I’ve made some of my best library finds by browsing the stacks, just taking some time off and walking around scanning the book titles. Odd ideas show up, mental connections get forged, and new insights [...]

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Neutrino Communications: An Interstellar Future?

April 18, 2012

The news that a message has been sent using a beam of neutrinos awakened a flood of memories. Back in the late 1970s I was involved with the Society for Amateur Radio Astronomers, mostly as an interested onlooker rather than as an active equipment builder. Through SARA’s journal I learned about Cosmic Search, a magazine [...]

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An Internet Designed for Space

February 23, 2011

You would think that Internet pioneer Vint Cerf would be too busy with the upcoming transition from Internet Protocol version 4 to IPv6 — not to mention his other duties as Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist — to keep an eye on space communications. But the man behind the Net’s TCP/IP protocols never lets the human [...]

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Pulsar Navigation for Deep Space

November 29, 2010

We’ve seen some remarkable feats of celestial navigation lately, not the least of which has been the flyby of comet Hartley 2 by the EPOXI mission. But as we continue our push out into the Solar System, we’re going to run into the natural limits of our navigation methods. The Deep Space Network can track [...]

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SETI and Open Data

April 23, 2010

Are there better ways of studying the raw data from SETI? We may know soon, because Jill Tarter has announced that in a few months, the SETI Institute will begin to make this material available via the SETIQuest site. Those conversant with digital signal processing are highly welcome, but so are participants from the general [...]

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Icarus: An Early Look at Communications

January 11, 2010

The Project Icarus weblog is up and running in the capable hands of Richard Obousy (Baylor University). The notion is to re-examine the classic Project Daedalus final report, the first detailed study of a starship, and consider where these technologies stand today. Icarus is a joint initiative between the Tau Zero Foundation and the British [...]

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The Gravitational Lens and Communications

November 6, 2009

If we can get the right kind of equipment to the Sun’s gravitational focus, remarkable astronomical observations should follow. We’ve looked at the possibilities of using this tremendous natural lens to get close-up images of nearby exoplanets and other targets, but in a paper delivered at the International Astronautical Congress in Daejeon, South Korea in [...]

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Millisecond Pulsars for Starship Navigation

June 1, 2009

If we can use GPS satellites to find out where we are on Earth, why not turn to the same principle for navigation in space? The idea has a certain currency — I remember running into it in John Mauldin’s mammoth (and hard to find) Prospects for Interstellar Travel (AIAA/Univelt, 1992) some years back. But [...]

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An Internet for Deep Space

November 21, 2008

Networking deep space should be a priority for future missions. If we can set up robust networking between spacecraft, we relieve the Deep Space Network of a huge burden, that of having to communicate directly with each spacecraft for tasks that are essentially routine. No more maneuvering huge dishes to catch one fleeting signal, at [...]

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