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Due to the distance and the finite speed of radio waves, there is a minimum delay in communications between Earth and Mars. The length of this delay will vary greatly depending on the distance between the two planets.

At the very minimum, Mars and Earth are about 55 million kilometers apart. A radio signal would take about three minutes to go one-way, so any reply would take 6 minutes. The average minimum distance can vary up to about 100 million kilometers, so the shortest time can be up to 5 and a half minutes one-way.

At the maximum, the two planets are about 380 million kilometers apart, which takes about 21 minutes for a radio wave to travel. Roundtrip time would be over 40 minutes.

A large satellite dish could transmit internet packets at a high rate, giving 'high-speed' download capability in terms of bits per second. However, latency would be a major problem; any requester would wait anywhere from about 6 minutes up to 40 minutes to get a reply. The way the Internet works now, timeouts would be an issue.

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15y ago

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