The space community has been envisioning for a long time the concept of the space internetworking, or in other words, the ability of connecting spacecraft in orbit in a hypothetical “Space Internet” as we would do with computers and servers on Earth. It is without doubt that advanced networking architectures are emerging in space system operations.





Startup companies proposing advanced concepts such as in-space cloud constellations and in-space blockchains have already emerged in the space innovation ecosystem. In this talk I will try to analyze how much of the activity in space internetworking is hype, and how much of it has higher likelihood to success.





More specifically, in this talk I will survey the state of the art in the topic of Federated Satellite Systems and its relevance to the idea of space internetworking. I will discuss the concept of federating spacecraft in orbit and Earth orbiting support systems (essentially, cloud computing in space). I will discuss the opportunities enabled by this revolutionary architecture concept. I will then overview the technological challenges involved and the possibilities enabled by emerging technologies such as optical communication systems for in-space networks.





Technological challenges include the realization and operations of network topologies that have never been operated in space, and the challenges entailed in operating heterogeneous spacecraft in different orbits. Chiefly among them, the coordination and scheduling of complex intersatellite link schemes, and dealing with RF interference, Doppler shifts and other technical issues involved.





I will then draw a balance of advantages and challenges of a federated approach to space internetworking, and let the audience evaluate on “whether the game is worth the candle”.