Aug 5, 2024 04:09 AM
NASA beamed laser message to Earth from 10 million miles away
https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-beamed...miles-away
INTRO: Eventually, we're going to want to expand the World Wide Web across the galaxy, and NASA recently demonstrated a key piece of tech that could help, beaming messages via laser across a distance of almost 16 million kilometers (10 million miles).
That's about 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth, and the accomplishment, achieved in November 2023, represented the first time that optical communications have been sent across such a distance.
Traditionally, we use radio waves to talk to distant spacecraft – but higher frequencies of light, such as near infrared, offer an increase in bandwidth and therefore a huge boost in data speed.
If we're going to eventually be able to send high-definition video messages to and from Mars without a significant delay, then this is a step towards the tech we need.
The test was part of NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, and the successful establishment of the comms link is known as 'first light'.
"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," Trudy Kortes, who is director of Technology Demonstrations at NASA Headquarters, said at the time... (MORE - details)
PRESS RELEASE (Nov 2023): https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-deep...first-data
NASA DSOC: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/deep-s...tions-dsoc
https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-beamed...miles-away
INTRO: Eventually, we're going to want to expand the World Wide Web across the galaxy, and NASA recently demonstrated a key piece of tech that could help, beaming messages via laser across a distance of almost 16 million kilometers (10 million miles).
That's about 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth, and the accomplishment, achieved in November 2023, represented the first time that optical communications have been sent across such a distance.
Traditionally, we use radio waves to talk to distant spacecraft – but higher frequencies of light, such as near infrared, offer an increase in bandwidth and therefore a huge boost in data speed.
If we're going to eventually be able to send high-definition video messages to and from Mars without a significant delay, then this is a step towards the tech we need.
The test was part of NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, and the successful establishment of the comms link is known as 'first light'.
"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," Trudy Kortes, who is director of Technology Demonstrations at NASA Headquarters, said at the time... (MORE - details)
PRESS RELEASE (Nov 2023): https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-deep...first-data
NASA DSOC: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/deep-s...tions-dsoc