The Communications and Navigation Demonstration on Shuttle (CANDOS) project used a new low-power transceiver (LPT) on the shuttle to communicate with bases in New Mexico, Virginia and Florida

The Communications and Navigation Demonstration on Shuttle (CANDOS) project used a new low-power transceiver (LPT) on the shuttle to communicate with bases in New Mexico, Virginia and Florida. Those wanting to represent the Internet graphically to a lay audience are fond of animations showing a spinning Earth criss-crossed by a network of buzzing, vibrating lines. Lift those animations up from the planet a bit, and you get a picture of what space someday could become -- a place where common Internet protocols are the norm for information exchange. Astronauts and cosmonauts are not likely to do their online holiday shopping from Earth orbit soon. But on its final mission, in the days preceding its fatal plunge on February 1, 2003, the Space Shuttle Columbia carried out a set of successful experiments and demonstrations showing the practicality of using the Internet in space. The "Internet" in this case is not the global Internet you and I know; it is NASA's very own province, called IONet, which is currently isolated from the Internet at large but uses the same protocols as the Internet.