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According to NASA, a laser transmission was received from a distance of 140 million miles to Earth, marking a significant technological advance. In this amazing feat, data was successfully sent using a laser beam as opposed to conventional radio waves. Establishing a communications link with spacecraft millions of kilometers away demonstrates the potential of laser-based communications technology to transform long-range space communications.
Compared to standard radio frequency communications, laser communications offer better data transfer speeds and greater efficiency. If NASA succeeds, it will represent a major turning point in space communications technology, allowing faster and more reliable connections to spacecraft and missions within the solar system and beyond.
Using the speed and accuracy of laser technology, scientists want to increase data transmission rates and capacity. It will open new avenues for space exploration and exploration of distant spacecraft and planets. This achievement highlights NASA’s continued dedication to expanding the frontiers of scientific research and represents a substantial advance in space communications technology.
NASA has announced that Earth has just received a laser communication from 140 million miles away. But before you get too excited about seeing aliens, there’s a simple explanation.
Earth just received a laser message from 140M miles away, NASA says
Psyche, a NASA spacecraft, sent the laser to Earth from its current position, which is 140 million miles away, or 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. NASA claims that the superior performance could open the door to more Mars missions.
In support of humanity’s next great leap—to send people to Mars—the achievement provides a glimpse into how spacecraft could use optical communications in the future, enabling high-data-rate communication of complex scientific information as well as high-definition imagery and video. According to the space agency.
NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications Transceiver, currently aboard the Psyche spacecraft, transmits laser messages to Earth. Data is sent and received by a transceiver using an 8.6-inch aperture telescope. “We downlinked about 10 minutes of redundant spacecraft data during the pass on April 8,” said Meera Srinivasan, project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
We were sending test and diagnostic data from Psyche in our downlink till then. It projects how optical communications could be linked to the spacecraft’s radio frequency communications system, marking a major milestone for the project. Psyche was only 19 million miles from Earth in December 2023 when the experiment began.
During the first test, test data was sent at a speed of 267 megabits per second, which is similar to broadband Internet download speeds. The spacecraft can now send and receive data more than seven times farther at slower speeds.
The spacecraft sent data at a speed of 25 megabits per second during the most recent test. Although this may seem small, NASA claims that it far exceeds the project’s goal of demonstrating that at least one megabit per second is achievable at that distance.
JPL project flight operations lead, Ken Andrews, said: “We’re doing this now, which has exceeded all our expectations, even though the data was downlinked for a short period of time.” NASA has historically only been able to connect with missions flying beyond Earth using radio waves.
‘Transitioning from radio communications to optical communications will allow data rates to increase throughout the solar system, 10 to 100 times the capacity of sophisticated systems currently used by spacecraft, such as fiber optics replacing old telephone lines on Earth. Demand for data increases,’ explained NASA. “It will support high-resolution science instruments and better enable future exploration missions involving humans and robots.”
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