Astronauts aboard the International Space Station are currently planning a spacewalk so they can install a high-speed satellite connection that will help increase their connections to Europe.
According to Space Daily, the system will allow astronauts to stay connected “at home broadband internet speeds,” delivering a total home value of video streaming for communication, not to mention a data line that connects the scientific studies on Board of Stations to researchers across Europe. .
The forty-year-old Station, which was set up when the internet was only at an early stage, will be equipped with a European autonomous communication model, along with the connection of a satellite communications system. United States granted.
The size machine is similar to a fridge device, which will be installed outside the Columbus ESA module of the Station designed to send signals to space, where a European telecommunications satellite will be built in “orbit”. geostationary, “36,000 kilometers above the Earth. , about 90 times the height of the station.
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NASA astronauts, vehicle pilot Victor Glover, commander Mike Hopkins, mission expert Shannon Walker and mission expert from Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, astronaut Soichi Noguchi walk out of the Operation and Checkout Building on their way to the SpaceX rocket Falcon 9 with the spaceship Dragon Crew on a 39A launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center.
The ‘ColKa’ tool
That satellite communication system is part of the European Data Repeat System. It will allow a similar internet connection with the Station, delivering data directly between European territory and the Station through the system ground station at Harwell in the United Kingdom.
NASA astronauts Michael Hopkins and Victor Glover plan to install the communications system device during spaceflight on Jan. 27.
That device, called “ColKa” which means “Columbus Ka-Band terminal,” connects to a plug-in outside the Columbus module that takes the data to and from internal astronaut computers.
This high-tech system promises faster communication through the use of European infrastructure to forward data to research studies in the Columbus model, allowing study authors on Earth to access their study there. the real time when the Station is within the European data. Relay System satellite range.
According to that space report, ColKa is ready to deliver maximum speeds of “50 Mbit / s for downlink and a maximum of 2 Mbit / s for uplink.”
Use of European Infrastructure
This new technology in space was designed and built by British and Italian companies, through the use of materials from countries including Canada, France, Belgium, Norway, and Germany.
Some of the countries named have been certified under the European Space Agency’s Advanced Research in Telecommunications System or ARTES program.
In addition, ColKa will use the infrastructure for the European Data Repeat System created as a telecommunications Partnership Project between Airbus and ESA, as part of business-to-business initiatives around broad programs, encouraging technological developments to reap the benefits.
This experience gained from designing, developing, and operating ColKa is said to be the medium for the ESA communications package under the ESPRIT communications unit, and refills being developed for the “gateway of the moon, ”a place more than a thousand times further from Earth. in contrast to the ISS which provides vital support for the sustained, long-term return of humans to the lunar surface.
In July last year, ESA announced this plan of the astronauts to install a high-speed connection in space but later, it also announced the deferral of activity to the spacecraft. he stated, “not earlier than February 13.”
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