1. What is Mercury?
2. What is AX.25?
3. What is KISS?

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1. What is Mercury?
Mercury is a software system for commanding a controlling a satellite ground station. It's goal is to help enable ubiquitous access to satellite resources via the Internet. We are developing a secure, reliable system to enable Internet access to orbiting space systems. The major components of the Mercury system include a web server front end, a database for stable data storage, and suite of software components to interface to and control ground station hardware.

More detailed information about Mercury is found in the Design Docs section.

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2. What is AX.25?
AX.25 is an amateur radio packet protocol that is well described by the TAPR pages on AX.25.

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3. What is KISS?
Keep it Simple Stupid (KISS). This can apply to many areas in life, but in the context of packet radio, it is a communication protocol between a computer host and a TNC (terminal node controller). Karn and Chepponis have an excellent description online.