/sci/ - Science & Math

NASA Tests Deep Space Laser Communications
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https://payloadspace.com/nasa-tests-deep-space-laser-communications/
> Deep space missions communicate with Earth primarily through the Deep Space Network (DSN), a network of antennas in Australia, California, and Spain operated by NASA. This has a few limitations:
> The DSN is running up against capacity limitations, and may not be able to support all the science missions planned for the coming years.
> Radio frequencies are remarkably low compared to laser by a factor of ~100,000, meaning they can’t carry nearly as much information in the same amount of time.
> The demonstration: NASA assigned the DSOC experiment to piggyback on the Psyche mission to see if laser communication may be a good choice to support future missions to Mars. After all, when the agency puts humans on the Red Planet, it’s definitely going to want to stream hi-def video back to Earth.
>On Nov. 14, DSOC locked onto a signal coming from a NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory beam. It then sent a predetermined test message via laser to a receiver in California from more than 10M miles away from Earth, farther than any laser message ever sent. It took ~50 seconds to travel that distance.
> “Optical communication is a boon for scientists and researchers who always want more from their space missions, and will enable human exploration of deep space,” said Jason Mitchell, director of NASA’s Advanced Communications and Navigation Technologies Division, in a blog post. “More data means more discoveries.”