NASA’s Psyche spacecraft (NASA)
For the first time in history, a space laser sent a signal back to Earth from 140 million miles away. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications experiment also interfaced with the Psyche spacecraft’s communication system for the first time, transmitting engineering data to Earth.
After interfacing with the Psyche’s radio frequency transmitter, the laser communications demo sent a copy of engineering data from over 140 million miles (226 million kilometers) away, 1 1⁄2 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. The asteroid-bound spacecraft doesn’t rely on optical communications to send data.
NASA explained that all of this is significant because this achievement provides a glimpse into how spacecraft could use optical communications in the future. Such technologies, explains NASA, enable higher-data-rate communications of complex scientific information as well as high-definition imagery and video in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars.
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The laser communications technology in this demo is designed to transmit data from deep space at rates 10 to 100 times faster than the state-of-the-art radio frequency systems used by deep space missions today.
After launching on Oct. 13, 2023, the spacecraft remains healthy and stable as it journeys to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to visit the asteroid Psyche.
“We downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft data during a pass on April 8,” said Meera Srinivasan, the project’s operations lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Until then, we’d been sending test and diagnostic data in our downlinks from Psyche. This represents a significant milestone for the project by showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft’s radio frequency comms system.”
NASA says that its Psyche mission is a “journey to a unique metal-rich asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.” What makes the asteroid Psyche unique is that it appears to be the exposed nickel-iron core of an early planet, one of the building blocks of our solar system.
“After receiving the data from the DSN and Palomar, we verified the optically downlinked data at JPL,” said Ken Andrews, project flight operations lead at JPL. “It was a small amount of data downlinked over a short time frame, but the fact we’re doing this now has surpassed all of our expectations.”
