United States: NASA has recently received messages from a distance of nearly 16 million kilometres, equal to 10 million miles.
That’s the first time optical communications have been sent over a distance this great, roughly 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth. The test is part of NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, and the successful establishment of the communications link is known as ‘first light.’
The Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, reportedly received the near-infrared laser. It was encoded with test data from nearly 10 million miles away, approximately 40 times farther than the distance between the Moon and Earth.
“Achieving first light is one of many critical DSOC milestones in the coming months, paving the way toward higher-data-rate communications capable of sending scientific information, high-definition imagery, and streaming video in support of humanity’s next giant leap,” remarked Mr. Trudy Kortes, Director of Technology Demonstrations at NASA Headquarters.
“It was a formidable challenge, and we have a lot more work to do, but for a short time, we were able to transmit, receive, and decode some data,” stated Ms. Meera Srinivasan, DSOC operations lead at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Deep Space Optical Communications
According to NASA, the DSOC experiment is a pioneering technology demonstration that will take laser communications to the next frontier: deep space. The DSOC transceiver will launch aboard the Psyche spacecraft, NASA’s first mission to the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, and test high-bandwidth optical communications to Earth during the first two years of the spacecraft’s journey to the main asteroid belt, as per the statement.
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