Categories: ScienceSpace StationTechnology

Compare the Space Station’s Internet Speed with Yours

The International Space Station as seen from the crew of STS-119. Credit: NASA

We now take it for granted that astronauts on the International Space Station can tweet and post things on Facebook and G+ live from space, but it wasn’t always so. Before January of 2010, any emails, news, or Twitter messages were sent to and from the ISS in uplink and downlink packages, so for example, Twitter messages from the astronauts were downlinked to mission control in Houston, and someone there posted them on the astronauts’ Twitter accounts. But now they have “live” internet. However, as you can imagine, there are no fiberoptic cables hooking up to the ISS, so the internet speeds aren’t blazing fast. Find out how fast in this latest video update from NASA’s Space to Ground, a weekly update on what’s happening aboard the ISS.

Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/