Lunar Science: Internet for Space Tourism

Abstract

The increased interest in space exploration drives the development of novel technologies that are useful in other areas, such as aviation. The use of these technologies gives rise to new challenges and applications. Space tourism is an emerging application due to advances in space exploration technologies. This paper addresses two challenges aimed at ensuring continued internet access in space tourism. The first is designing network architecture to ensure continued internet access for space tourists aboard a space vehicle. The second is using aerial vehicle technology to enhance access to cloud content in areas with poor telecommunication infrastructure. The paper proposes the distributed handover algorithm ensuring that the space vehicle can execute handover from terrestrial wireless networks to aerial platforms and satellites as a last mile connection. It also proposes the concept of aerial diversity ensuring low cost access to cloud content. Performance simulation shows that the use of the distributed handover algorithm enhances channel capacity by 18.4% on average and reduces latency by 11.6% on average. The use of the cloud content access system incorporating aerial diversity enhances the channel capacity of terrestrial wireless networks by up to 85% on average.