The Current and Upcoming Developments in Interstellar Communication

I recently discovered that the movie "Passengers" was showing on television. I was immediately struck by the thought, "Why the hell he decided to wake up the writer, not the hibernation capsules engineer?!" when I first saw it. My mind raised a more scientific query during the second viewing.

At the beginning of the movie, the main character sends a video message to the Earth, hoping to get help. A happy voice on a robot says that the message was sent and will arrive on Earth in 19 years, while the response will return in 36 years.

You have a spacecraft that is completely self-sufficient and outfitted with artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

Sooo, you have a fully autonomous spacecraft, equipped with something similar to AI, which flies with a speed of ½ the speed of light and has everything needed to colonize a new planet. In other words, you can fully analyze a distant planet (in a different system) and determine that it is habitable. However, the establishment of high-speed space communications has yet to be accomplished. Is this task truly that hard? Let's see what we can learn.

Radio waves move more quickly than you would have imagined
These days, radio waves are used by all spacecraft on the Moon, Mars, Titan, or the edge of the solar system to send signals. The sound of the radio wave seems to be from the previous century. The reality is that in a vacuum in space Sooo, you have a fully autonomous spacecraft, equipped with something like to AI, which flies with a speed of ½ the speed of light and has everything needed to colonize a new planet. In other words, you can fully analyze a distant planet (in a different system) and determine that it is habitable. However, the establishment of high-speed space communications has yet to be accomplished. Is this task truly that hard? Let's see what we can learn.

The issue of signal latency persists despite the great speed at which information is transferred. For instance, it can take anywhere from three to twenty-one minutes for signals to be transmitted from Mars to Earth. This is because the planets are separated by a range of 56 to 226 million kilometers.

The previous era's bandwidth
The second major problem of radio is low bandwidth. Do you recall the Internet's early days when the modem connection made odd noises? The same trash is now here in space.A single channel's maximum throughput is limited to 256 Kbps. And that's assuming there isn't any interference or signal transmission loss, which is extremely uncommon.

Infinity's lack of room
Radio waves must not encounter obstructions during transmission in order to reach Earthly receivers in a legible format. The celestial bodies, however, are always moving. The Sun takes over the space between Mars and Earth every 780 days, destroying any communication.

Obstacles increase with the distance between the transmitter and the receiver. Interstellar wandering, much alone constant communication with spacecraft at the frontier of our system, is unthinkable.

"Bread Crumbs"
Using bread crumbs is enough to remove the impact of cosmic bodies.For instance, a trail of tiny communication satellites is left behind by the same spaceship during the trip. They create an endless chain and successively send signals to one another and, ultimately, to the Earth. Another advantage of this strategy is that it eliminates the need to outfit the spaceship with a robust communications system. This will need a lot of energy to send a strong signal straight from a spacecraft to Earth.

This issue is resolved significantly more easily inside the Solar System. A few spacecraft must be positioned in orbits that are distinct from the planets' orbits and do not intersect with the paths of other celestial bodies. However, bear in mind that these spacecraft need to have substantial reserves.In fact, the issue of data packet corruption during communication channel interruptions has been fixed. The ISS now uses DTN, which underwent successful testing in 2008. To put it simply, its protocols allow information packets to be stored until a reliable communication channel forms, rather than being sent to no place.

The Laser Time
Alright, our communication connection is reliable, however it only has 256 kbps of bandwidth. Consider the inefficient situation where you are attempting to fill a glass with water from the faucet at a rate of one drop per second. A laser beam uses less energy and can carry a lot more information than radio waves.

In fact, the issue of data packet corruption during communication channel interruptions has been fixed. The ISS now uses DTN, which underwent successful testing in 2008. To put it simply, its protocols allow information packets to be stored until a reliable communication channel forms, rather than being sent to no place.

The phenomenon of quantum entanglement is one of these occurrences. Without delving into the entire theory, we have two particles that are related. Regardless of their distance from one another, the second particle exhibits the change in state of the first particle in the same instant. The destruction of one particle immediately results in the destruction of the other, even if they are at opposite ends of the universe.

It sounds amazing, almost magical. Regretfully, quantum entanglement cannot be used to send any information, even if this theory is correct. This limitation results from the breakdown of the wave function, which is another physics law.

A wave function that describes each particle's potential location, speed, and other characteristics is provided. However, all of its property values are lost after particle measurement, and the collected data is no longer available.