Guest editorial: Smart communications and networking for future deep-space exploration

Since the first space probe flew to the Moon in 1959, over 200 deep-space exploration missions have already been carried out on the eight planets, various asteroids and comets in the solar system. Amount of deep-space scientific experiments promoted people to understand about the origin and evolution of the universe. With the rapid developments of equipment and spacecraft with high-accuracy detector and long-term energy, more and more ambitious deep-space exploration plans have also been scheduled or under discussion about space resources utilization and space migration, e.g., manned landing on the Mars, guard infrastructures on the Moon and human-flight to the edge of the solar system (>100 AU), etc.