Astronauts onboard the International Space Station are currently planning a spacewalk so they can install a high-speed satellite link that will help enhance their connections with Europe.
According to Space Daily, the system will allow astronauts to stay connected "at home broadband internet speeds," delivering an entire household's worth of video streaming for communications, not to mention a data pipeline that links the scientific investigations aboard the Stations to researchers across Europe.
The two-decades-old Station, which was established when the internet was only at its early stage, will be equipped with an autonomous communications module from Europe, along with the connectivity which a United States satellite communications system has provided.
The device sized similar to that of a fridge, which will be installed on the outside of the Station's ESA Columbus module is designed to send signals into space, where a European telecommunications satellite will pick them up in "geostationary orbit," 36,000 kilometers above Earth, roughly 90 times the station's height.
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NASA astronauts, vehicle pilot Victor Glover, commander Mike Hopkins, mission specialist Shannon Walker and mission specialist from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, astronaut Soichi Noguchi walk out of the Operations and Checkout Building on their way to the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket with the Crew Dragon spacecraft on launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center.
The 'ColKa' Device
The said satellite communications system is part of the European Data Relay System. It will allow internet-like connectivity with the Station, delivering data directly between the European land and the Station through the ground station of the system in Harwell in the United Kingdom.
Astronauts of NASA, Michael Hopkins, and Victor Glover are scheduled to install the communications system device during a spacewalk slated on January 27.
The said tool called, "ColKa" which means "Columbus Ka-Band terminal," links to a plug outside the Columbus module that will transmit the data to and from the computers of astronauts inside.
This high-tech system will guarantee faster communications through the use of European infrastructure to transmit data to the ground for research investigations in the Columbus module, enabling study authors on Earth to access their studies in real-time when the Station is within the European Data Relay System satellite's range.
According to this said space report, ColKa is set to provide 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 firms, through the use of products from countries including Canada, France, Belgium, Norway, and Germany.
Some of the countries mentioned have been qualified under the program of Advanced Research in Telecommunications System or ARTES of the European Space Agency.
In addition, ColKa will utilize the infrastructure for the European Data Relay System created as a telecommunications Partnership Project between Airbus and ESA, as part of the latter's initiatives to merge industry around extensive programs, stimulating technology developments to attain benefits.
This knowledge gotten from designing, developing, and operating ColKa is said to be instrumental for the communications package of ESA under the ESPRIT communications, and replenishing unit that's being developed for the "lunar Gateway," an outpost more than a thousand times farther from Earth compared to the ISS that will give vital backing for a maintainable, long-term return of humans to the lunar surface.
In July last year, ESA already announced this plan of the astronauts to install high-speed connectivity in space but later on, it also announced the postponement of the activity to what it reported, "no earlier than February 13."
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