Earth just received a laser transmission from a world- (and perhaps universe-) record-breaking 140 million miles away — which could have major implications for the future of space travel.
This redefined a long-distance call. Earth just received a laser transmission from a world- (and perhaps universe-) record-breaking 140 million miles away — which could have major implications for the future of space travel.
However, this correspondence wasn’t extraterrestrial in origin: It was actually sent by NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, which is currently located approximately 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the sun.
“This represents a significant milestone for the project by showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft’s radio frequency comms system,” Meera Srinivasan, the project’s operations lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement.
This major breakthrough was achieved by using a Psyche feature called Deep Space Optical Communications, or DSOC, one of the droid’s several tasks per Space.com.
Its main directive is exploring 16 Psyche, the asteroid from which it takes its name.
NASA wanted to show the potential for laser communications to be conducted across interstellar distances, allowing for high bandwidth and a much speedier connection — from 10 to 100 times faster than what’s available today — between humans and the probes they send into space. Full Article @ NY Post
From Space.com
A NASA laser just fired successfully in a deep-space test.
On Nov. 14, NASA picked up a laser signal fired from an instrument that launched with the Psyche spacecraft, which is currently more than 10 million miles (16 million kilometers) from Earth and heading toward a mysterious metal asteroid. (The spacecraft is at more than 40 times the average distance of Earth's moon, and still voyaging afar.) Full Article
<