(American National Standards Institute, Washington, D.C.) -- A project underway at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory is truly out of this world. Teams from NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency—the research arm of the U.S. Department of Defense—are working to hammer out a networking standard that will form the backbone of a future interplanetary system of Internets. Dubbed InterPlaNet, the standard would enable spacecraft communication and the sharing of information across the solar system. Today, NASA spacecraft carry telecommunications equipment that enables them to correspond with Earth, but these devices lack the ability to link with those on other spacecraft.

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