An exciting milestone has been reached by NASA: the reception of laser data sent from the depths of space by the Pysche probe, when it was about 226 million km from Earth.
During the spacecraft’s journey towards asteroid 16-Psyche, after being launched in October last year, the mission team tested this new communication system, which does not use radio waves as usual, but rather an infrared laser. NASA confirmed that the system works successfully from the most distant place ever tested – the equivalent of one and a half distances between the Earth and the Sun.
According to a statement from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), the April 8 test showed that even at that distance, data could be downloaded at a maximum rate of 25 Mbps. This is already well beyond the expected target of “at least 1 Mbps” and 10 to 100 times faster than radio transmissions.
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Meera Srinivasan, project operations lead at JPL, says about 10 minutes of duplicate spacecraft data were shaved off during this test. “This represents a significant milestone for the project, showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft’s radio frequency communications system.”
Previous tests were done with the much closer Psyche probe – just tens of millions of kilometers away. Images and even a kitten video were sent from deep space.
While the technology continues to show promise, there are still some issues that need to be resolved. For example, optical observations are interrupted by clouds – a problem that does not exist in radio communications.
The team will test the system again in June, when Psyche will be two and a half times the distance that Earth is from the Sun. As this is the maximum distance between Mars and Earth, if the communication works, then it will be possible to create an intensive network of data between us and the Red Planet.
