Earth just received a laser message from 140 million miles away, NASA reveals
- The laser was sent to Earth by NASA’s Psyche spacecraft
- This is 230 million kilometers away – 1.5x the distance between the Earth and the Sun
Earth has just received a laser message from 140 million miles away, NASA has revealed.
But before you get carried away by visions of aliens, there is a simple explanation.
The laser was sent to Earth by NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, which is currently 230 million kilometers away – 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the sun.
This impressive feat could pave the way for future missions to Mars, according to NASA.
‘This achievement provides a glimpse into how spacecraft may use optical communications in the future, enabling higher data rate communications of complex scientific information, as well as high-definition images and video to support humanity’s next big step: humans to Mars send,” the space agency explained.
Earth has just received a laser message from 140 million miles away, NASA has revealed. But before you get carried away by visions of aliens, there is a simple explanation (artist’s impression)
The laser message was sent to Earth by NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications transceiver, currently aboard the Psyche spacecraft.
The transceiver sends and receives data through an 8.6-inch aperture telescope.
“We downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicate spacecraft data during a flyby on April 8,” said Meera Srinivasan, the project’s operations lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
‘Until then we were sending test and diagnostic data in our downlinks from Psyche.
“This represents an important milestone for the project as it demonstrates how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft’s radio frequency communications system.”
The laser message was beamed to Earth by NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications transceiver, which is currently orbiting the Psyche spacecraft
The experiment first launched in December 2023, when Psyche was just 20 million miles from Earth.
During that first test, test data was transmitted at a speed of 267 megabits per second – comparable to the download speed of broadband internet.
Now that the spacecraft is more than seven times further away, the speed at which it can send and receive data is reduced.
During the final test, the spacecraft transmitted data at a rate of 25 megabits per second.
While this may not sound like much, NASA says it far exceeds the project’s goal of proving that at least one megabit per second is possible at that distance.
The laser was sent to Earth by NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, which is currently 230 million kilometers away – 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
Ken Andrews, head of project flight operations at JPL, said: “It was a small amount of data downlinked in a short time frame, but the fact that we are doing this now has exceeded all our expectations.”
Previously, NASA only used radio waves to communicate with missions traveling beyond Earth.
‘Just as fiber optics replace Earth’s old telephone lines as demand for data grows, the transition from radio to optical communications will enable higher data rates across the solar system, with 10 to 100 times the capacity of state-of-the-art systems. currently used by spacecraft,” NASA explained.
“This will better enable future human and robotic exploration missions, along with supporting higher resolution scientific instruments.”