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Unified Communications: Is Space The Next Frontier?
Unified Communications: Is Space The Next Frontier?

July 28, 2022

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It is widely said that of all species that have existed on Earth, 99.9 percent are now extinct. Consider the dinosaurs, which were a successful group of animals that ruled the world for millions of years until one unfortunate day when a giant asteroid slammed into Earth and wiped them all forever. It's difficult to imagine, but if dinosaurs had a space program at the time, some of their clan would have lived on extraterrestrial planets, where the dinosaur species would have survived even after the mighty asteroid collision on Earth. Life on earth is limited by its biosphere. Today, the earth supports 7 billion people and billions of other species. The industrial revolution and the use of fossil fuels had a dangerous effect on our climate, which is threatening our very existence today. Though the world is banding together to combat climate change with renewable energy and sustainability initiatives, the point is that the earth's resources are finite and may not be sustainable if the population doubles, say to 15 billion. Therefore, there is a need to create habitants on other planets like Mars for the future expansion of mankind.

NASA’s Artemis Mission

t has been 50 years since humans left the earth’s orbit. The last time we were on the Moon was in 1972, when the last Apollo mission, Apollo 17, returned after 12 days. Since then, there have been several unmanned missions to the moon, but none of them were manned missions. The good news is that now NASA plans to send humans to the Moon by 2024, and the bigger plan is to send humans to Mars one day to expand life beyond Earth. NASA started the Artemis mission with a total expenditure of $10 billion USD. With the Artemis mission, NASA will land the first woman and the first person of color on the moon, using innovative technologies to explore more of the lunar surface than ever before. NASA is collaborating with commercial and international partners to establish the first long-term presence on the Moon. The knowledge gained on and around the Moon will then be applied to the next giant leap of sending the first astronauts to Mars.

Apollo v/s Artemis

The primary objective of the Apollo mission was to perform a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth. Apollo 11 achieved this historic feat on July 20, 1969, while Artemis is aimed at growing the lunar economy by fueling new industries, supporting job growth, and furthering the demand for a skilled workforce. The mission, Artemis, will explore more of the Moon than ever before. Along the way, it will engage and inspire the next generation.

Tech powered Artemis Mission

Mission Artemis will use Lockheed Martin's designed Orion spacecraft to send astronauts to the moon. The Orion spacecraft will be equipped with an Amazon Alexa AI assistant, a tablet with Cisco Webex software installed, and a Virtual Reality Camera. The astronauts in the spacecraft can interact with Alexa to get real-time data on the spacecraft's status, including speed, trajectory, and other mission-critical information. The astronauts will use Cisco Webex to video conference with mission control on Earth, and the ground crew will use Cisco Webex to communicate with Alexa. The Alexa and the Webex module in the spacecraft will make use of NASA’s deep space network to communicate with the crew on Earth.

Video Collaboration in Deep Space

The only two-way communication channel available between the astronauts in the spacecraft and the Mission Control Room on Earth during the Apollo missions to the Moon was audio. With video conferencing and collaboration between astronauts in space and the mission control room on Earth, the Artemis mission becomes more productive. Today’s video collaboration systems have rich feature sets like voice, video, chat, white board sharing, noise cancellations, transcriptions, language translations, and many more. For instance, on April 13th, 1970, 56 hours after the launch of Apollo 13, a faulty wiring in one of the oxygen tanks ignited a spark that led to an explosion. The landing on the Moon was abandoned, and the new mission objective was the survival of the astronauts onboard. The ground team worked against the clock to rescue the astronauts by guiding them on how to fix the problem in the spacecraft. It surely would have been a daunting and time-consuming task with just audio to communicate with astronauts. With video collaboration, the ability to see each other and leverage collaboration features like white board sharing, transcription, etc., communication and collaboration becomes easy, and a catastrophic problems in a spacecraft can be solved in a timely manner. The video collaboration in deep space also opens the doors for astronauts onboard to talk to their families and friends at ease, so they are emotionally connected to their loved ones while on the mission.

Deep Space Network Challenges

When it comes to communicating with space, the picture is not as rosy as it appears in movies and television shows where astronauts on distant planets can video chat in crystal clear quality and without delay with family and friends on Earth. It is difficult to communicate with and from space. Higher bandwidth, higher data rates, low latency and minimal interference are required for a seamless 4K ultra high-definition video collaboration between astronauts in space and mission crew on earth. Today, NASA relies primarily on radio waves for space communications, which travel at the speed of light – 186K miles per second. A signal from the moon to Earth, which is 238K miles away, can reach Earth in less than 2 seconds, whereas a signal from Mars, which is 109 million miles away, takes an average of 15 minutes to reach Earth. The signals traveling such a long distance may be subjected to cosmic rays in space that shall deteriorate the signal. NASA is developing technologies and capabilities to address the real-world challenges of space communications while also providing robust communications services to science and exploration missions. For instance, NASA is developing an indigenous technology called Optical Communications Systems (O2O) that will provide the Artemis and Orion spacecraft with data rates as much as 10 times higher than possible through current systems. The O2O leverages laser communications. The O2O will enable live 4K ultra-definition video from the Moon.

Closing Thoughts

In the 1960s, Star Trek, a science fiction television series about aliens and humans serving in Starfleet, captured the world's attention and excitement. This science fiction series raised the prospect of meeting aliens and relocating humans to other planets in the future. We are not yet there in 2022, but the hope of meeting aliens, of discovering life beyond Earth, and of establishing a human race on other planets persists. Just as the invention of the Internet in the 1990s paved the way for today's connected world, the technological advancements in deep space network and the establishments of technology powerhouses such as Alexa AI assistant, Cisco Webex, and many more in extraterrestrial planets will one day lead to a connected universe.


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Venkat Kandhari
Industry Principal

Mr. Venkat is an Industry Principal working with Infosys Limited. A thought leader in Unified Communications field with 24 years of industry experience in Unified Communications Research and Product Development and a proven track record in building technology teams who partner with business leaders in meeting strategic goals. Venkat’s professional expertise includes UC Linux platform and UC product security. He holds Master of Computer Application (MCA) from Osmania University Hyderabad, India

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