Hermes-DSN emulates high-latency, intermittent Earth-to-Mars communication channels and implements resilient Delay-Tolerant Networking protocols — purpose-built to address NASA's deep-space data disruption challenges.
Every component targets a real failure mode in deep-space communications.
Asynchronous store-and-forward queue with CBOR serialization, TTL expiration management, and payload fragmentation/reassembly — fully compliant with RFC 9171.
Real-time simulation of orbital mechanics, planetary rotation blackouts, solar conjunction interference, and bit-error-rate mutations across variable propagation delays.
Standardized ZeroMQ, UDP, and gRPC convergence layer interfaces decouple protocol orchestration from the physical transport layer.
Native integration with Software-Defined Radios via SoapySDR and GNU Radio 4, plus FPGA acceleration module interfaces.
Lossless packet reassembly with Forward Error Correction for graceful recovery from partial data loss across multi-hop relay paths.
WebSocket and gRPC-driven UI displaying end-to-end packet travel times, buffer occupancy, dynamic link states, and reassembly progress.
An animated walkthrough of how Hermes-DSN handles delay-tolerant store-and-forward delivery across intermittent deep-space contact windows.
Earth's ground station transmits a bundle only when orbital geometry allows a line-of-sight link to the relay orbiter.
The relay orbiter holds the bundle in durable custody until its next contact window with Mars opens — potentially hours later.
Bundles reach Mars and telemetry returns to Earth through the same relay, surviving outages without retransmission.
Each service is independently containerized and communicates over well-defined gRPC and ZeroMQ interfaces.
RFC 9171 store-and-forward engine with CBOR bundle serialization and TTL management
Orbital delay, blackout scheduling, and bit-error-rate mutation proxy
Lossless multi-hop packet reassembly with Forward Error Correction
Real-time telemetry UI over WebSockets and gRPC streaming
Hermes-DSN is directly engineered to mitigate the data disruption risks identified in NASA Need 7.01.
Hermes-DSN is developed in collaboration with leading academic institutions advancing space communications research.
Villavicencio, Colombia
Built by Enciso Systems for next-generation deep-space mission infrastructure.