A 15-second ultra-high-definition video, featuring a cat named Taters, was streamed via laser from a record-setting 31 million km (19 million miles, or about 80 times the Earth-Moon distance) away by NASA on December 11, 2023. It was part of the technology demonstration known as Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC), which is attached to NASA’s Psyche spacecraft traveling to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Graphics superimposed over the cat illustrate several features from the tech demo, such as Psyche’s orbital path and technical information about the laser.
“This accomplishment underscores our commitment to advancing optical communications as a key element to meeting our future data transmission needs,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy.
“Increasing our bandwidth is essential to achieving our future exploration and science goals, and we look forward to the continued advancement of this technology and the transformation of how we communicate during future interplanetary missions.”
The demo transmitted the 15-second test video via a cutting-edge instrument called a flight laser transceiver.
The video signal took 101 seconds to reach Earth, sent at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second (Mbps).
Capable of sending and receiving near-infrared signals, the instrument beamed an encoded near-infrared laser to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, where it was downloaded.
Each frame from the looping video was then sent ‘live’ to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, where the video was played in real time.
The laser communications demo, which launched with NASA’s Psyche mission on October 13, is designed to transmit data from deep space at rates 10 to 100 times greater than the state-of-the-art radio frequency systems used by deep space missions today.
As Psyche travels to…
Read the full article here