One year ago today, the future of space communications arrived at Earth as a beam of light from a NASA spacecraft nearly 10 million miles away. That’s 40 times farther than our Moon. That’s like using a laser pointer to track a moving dime from a mile away. That’s pretty precise. That laser — transmitted … Read more
The Deep Space Optical Communications tech demo has completed several key milestones, culminating in sending a signal to Mars’ farthest distance from Earth. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration broke yet another record for laser communications this summer by sending a laser signal from Earth to NASA’s Psyche spacecraft about 290 million miles (460 … Read more
The video, featuring a cat named Taters, was sent back from nearly 19 million miles away by NASA’s laser communications demonstration, marking a historic milestone. NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications experiment beamed an ultra-high definition streaming video on Dec. 11 from a record-setting 19 million miles away (31 million kilometers, or about 80 times the … Read more
Slated to launch on Oct. 12 with the Psyche mission, DSOC will demonstrate technologies enabling the agency to transmit higher data rates from deep space. NASA’s pioneering Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment will be the first demonstration of laser, or optical, communications from as far away as Mars. Launching with NASA’s Psyche mission to … Read more