Towards the Reliable and Efficient Interplanetary Internet: A Survey of Possible Advanced Networking and Communications Solutions

Recently, in Washington D.C., National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and European Space Agency (ESA) officials decided pursuing a mission to study Jupiter and its moons, and another to visit the largest moons of Saturn. These initiatives represent important actions that set the future of the planetary science and could answer questions concerning how our Solar System formed and whether habitable conditions exist elsewhere in it. Those missions need a robust, efficient and flexible communication infrastructure. This opens the doors to new communications and networking challenges, which are the ones of the so called InterPlaNetary (IPN) Internet and they are the objects of the survey presented in this work.