Interplanetary internet tested

The many paths a message can take through the Internet make that network robust and efficient - and the envy of those whose job it is to design communications schemes for the far-flung spacecraft leaving Earth each year. After more than a decade of development, NASA is in a rush to have a communications network ready by 2011 that can efficiently carry data between Earth and the multiple probes, rovers, orbiters, and spacecraft exploring the solar system - effectively binding them together to form an interplanetary Internet. Tests performed on the International Space Station last May were the second of three try outs of the network´s key technologies, called delay tolerant networking, or DTN protocols.