Earth receives laser beam message from 16 million km away Photos: NASA
Earth receives laser beam message from 16 million km’s away
NASA beamed a near-infrared laser encoded with test data from more than 16 million km away. Here is the latest.
Earth receives laser beam message from 16 million km away Photos: NASA
NASA beamed a near-infrared laser encoded with test data from more than 16 million km’s away – about 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth.
EARTH RECEIVES LASER BEAM MESSAGE FROM 16 MILLION KM’S AWAY
This is part of NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment.
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NASA announced on Thursday that the agency successfully received data in the farthest-ever demonstration of laser, or optical, communications.
THIS IS THE FARTHEST-EVER DEMONSTRATION OF LASER, COMMUNICATIONS
NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment beamed a near-infrared laser encoded with test data from nearly 16 093 440 km’s away to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California.
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The Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment is a pioneering technology demonstration that will take laser communications to the next frontier: deep space.
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DSOC IS PIONEERING TECHNOLOY WILL TAKE LASER COMMUNICATIONS TO THE NEXT FRONTIER
“With new deep space missions producing ever more data, laser-based communications offer a significant augmentation of radio frequency telecommunications, the current standard. Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, DSOC will allow data rates at least 10 times higher than state-of-the-art radio telecommunications systems of comparable size and power, enabling higher resolution images, larger volumes of science data, and even streaming video.”
NASA
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Known as the “first light,” this success is a significant stepping stone toward increasing the amount of data transmitted throughout the solar system.
THIS FIRST LIGHT PAVES THE WAY TOWARD HIGHER-DATA-RATE COMMUNICATIONS
“Achieving first light is one of many critical DSOC milestones in the coming months, paving the way toward higher-data-rate communications capable of sending scientific information, high-definition imagery, and streaming video in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars,”
said Trudy Kortes, director of Technology Demonstrations at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
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Before this achievement, the project needed to check the boxes on several other milestones, from removing the protective cover for the flight laser transceiver to powering up the instrument.
Meanwhile, the Psyche spacecraft is carrying out its own checkouts, including powering up its propulsion systems and testing instruments that will be used to study the asteroid Psyche when it arrives there in 2028.
