Tuesday, April 10, 2012

One Clock To Rule Them All

How to compensate for long distance (inter-planetary) communications with spacecraft. Make it a one-way command.


http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/clock/dsac.html

To sum it up, it can take many hours (at light speed) for a signal from a spacecraft to reach earth, and the same or longer time to reply.  This allows us to just tell the craft what to do, and we can hear back from you later.  Lots of assuming "everything is OK".  Which is ok...and more efficient.

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