Concept network design for a young Mars science station and Trans-planetary communication

NASA is planning to send a satellite with some people on it to Mars in 2019. They are calling it manned mission to Mars. This paper presents a high-level networking design to provide high bandwidth for a young and growing Mars settlement and science station. A physical network topology is described consisting of a high power ground station to communicate with orbiters. Different parts and devices of the station are connected with network infrastructure. Some examples are given for various non-obvious use cases of the network. Additionally, an upper level networking protocol is described to handle reliable communication between planets. This transplanetary Data Mailing Protocol (TDMP) operates three processes working together: a database of retrievable files and user inbox files; a 'parcel' structure for data to be contained; and parcel piece fragmenting for asynchronous pipelined transmission and loss handling. Together, these systems allow ease of connection between people, scientists, and experiments.