Because we need to be able to update Facebook during the 2year journey to Mars.
Status: Do not have cabin fever. /repeat.

Oh and get streaming video from our robot friends as they build our habitats.

From New Scientist:

NASA has finished its first deep-space test of what could become an ‘interplanetary internet’. The new networking commands could one day be used to automatically relay information between Earth, spacecraft, and astronauts, without the need for humans to schedule transmissions at each point.

…Just as data is sent from one point to another on the internet via a linked network of hubs, or nodes, spacecraft scattered throughout the solar system could be used as nodes to transmit data through space.

…the new protocol, called Disruption- or Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN), commands each node in the network to store information until it can find another node that can receive the information.

Data is relayed in a chain and should only need to be transmitted once. “The nodes themselves can take care of making sure the data moves progressively from the source to its destination,” Hooke told New Scientist.

To guard against hackers, the data transmitted over DTN is encrypted. In order to transmit or accept data, a node must identify itself to its companion, a concept called ‘mutual suspicion.’

…

Hooke hopes to incorporate the protocol on upcoming space missions, beginning with robotic missions to the Moon. “The goal is by the end of 2011 to have these protocols ready to go out of the box, so we can give them to project managers to load onto spacecraft,” Hooke says.

…the team plans to set up a permanent DTN node at the International Space Station. The protocol will be uploaded to a payload aboard the station in mid-2009.