This is reported here by spacenews.com (I've no affiliation). NASA has been involved in a lot of recent work on disruption-tolerant networks for space based relays and has been forming some interested related partnerships and so this is an announcement I very much expected.
One proposal presented at those meetings features three satellites in equatorial orbits at altitudes of 6,000 kilometers. The satellites would be equipped with radio links for communicating with other spacecraft in orbit and on the surface as well as to and from Earth. The satellites may also include laser intersatellite links to allow them to communicate with each other.
A recent article in IET Communications gave an algorithm for switching between radio and free space optical (FSO) communications which could make disruption-tolerant inteplanetary networks a reality.
To me it's amazing to think that at some point in the near future we will have interplanetary communication networks. With projects like Starlink and the research I've been seeing lately it's entirely possible that the first people on Mars could have access to an internet on day 1; albeit cache'd, with between 3 and 22 minutes delay in the speed of light to get page updates from Earth's internet. Though I'm sure it's not without its technical challenges to overcome.
After seeing this news I originally posted to /r/lasercom but imagine /r/networking will be interested too. At some point in the near future I suspect there will be a career path for a communications engineer focussed entirely on interplanetary networks.
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