Communication

This is a subtopic of the main page, Life on Mars.

All communication goes through satellites.

Both planets' orbits carry them to the same side of the Sun once every two years, at which point the distance between them totals roughly 55 million kilometers. At the opposite ends of their orbits – when Mars is one side of the Sun and Earth the other – this stretches to around 400 million. As communication signals travel at the speed of light, this means that it can take between 3 and 22 minutes for the information to reach the other end. A phone call would not be practical, but there would be no limitations to email, texting or 'WhatsApping' with the Mars residents. It'll just take at least 6 minutes for you to get your reply. Both voicemail and video messages are also easily workable options.

The astronauts can use the Internet, but can only surf 'real time' on a number of websites that are downloaded from Earth on the Mars habitat webserver. Every astronauts will have access to his favorite websites that way. Other websites will be very impractical because of the delay.

The settlement will be broadcasting images of daily life back to Earth 24/7, so that everyone can see what the astronauts are up to. Of course, they will be delayed by anything from 3 to 22 minutes, so they will be as close to live as we can get!

This expanse means the Mars astronauts will have to be very self-sufficient. Should they send down a "Houston, we have a problem," Houston might not even know about it until 22 minutes later. Even so, we would not be much help: our fastest rocket will be scheduled to arrive six months after the fact.