Virginia Tech, George Mason University partner to develop networking infrastructure for satellite constellations | 8 May 2023

"Virginia Tech, together with partners from George Mason University, has been awarded a $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to change this. Through the agency’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Community Research Infrastructure (CCRI) program, researchers will develop distributed, mobile space and terrestrial networking infrastructure for multi-constellation coexistence. Principal investigator Jonathan Black, along with fellow Virginia Tech engineering faculty, has teamed with George Mason University to develop a network test bed called SpaceNet for the industry standard technology behind internet satellite constellations. This project is built on the initial trans-Atlantic test bed developed through a Commonwealth Cyber Initiative-supported program in collaboration with the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. “The NSF grant will support open-source cyber-infrastructure development and enable research on the creation of a new space-based networking technology that will connect networks from the surface of the Earth to the moon,” said Black, a professor in the Kevin T. Crofton Department of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering. “The goal is to open up these networks to all, uniting separate, independent constellations and encourage broad adoption of this technology.” ..."