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NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration has broken yet another record for laser communications by sending a laser signal from Earth to NASA’s Psyche spacecraft about 460-million kilometres away. That’s the same distance between our planet and Mars when the two planets are farthest apart.
Managed by JPL, the Deep Space Optical Communications experiment consists of a flight laser transceiver and two ground stations. Caltech’s historic 5-meter aperture Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory, acts as the downlink station to which the laser transceiver sends its data from deep space. The Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain facility acts as the uplink station, capable of transmitting 7 kilowatts of laser power to send data to the transceiver.
Even when Psyche was about 53-million kilometres away – comparable to Mars’ closest approach to Earth – the technology demonstration could transmit data at the system’s maximum rate of 267 megabits per second. That bit rate is similar to broadband internet download speeds. As the spacecraft travels farther away, the rate at which it can send and receive data is reduced, as expected.
In seeking to achieve this goal, the project had an opportunity to test unique data sets like art and high-definition video along with engineering data from the Psyche spacecraft. For example, one downlink included digital versions of Arizona State University’s “Psyche Inspired” artwork, images of the team’s pets, and a 45-second ultra-high-definition video that spoofs television test patterns from the previous century and depicts scenes from Earth and space.
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