Scientists at the European Space Agency used a laser to communicate with a spacecraft 165 million miles (265 million kilometers) away in deep space for the first time, marking a major step forward in their efforts to build optical communication systems for future missions to the Moon and beyond.<\/p>\n
Scientists at the Kryoneri Observatory near Athens, Greece, shot a powerful laser at NASA\u2019s Psyche mission, which then sent a return signal to the Helmos Observatory, which lies some 23 miles (37 km) away from the signal\u2019s origin.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is an amazing success. Through years of technological advancements, international standardisation efforts and adoption of innovative engineering solutions we have set a cornerstone of the Solar System Internet,\u201d Mariella Spada, ESA\u2019s head of Ground systems Engineering and Innovation, said in a statement<\/a>.<\/p>\n To pull it off, mission control at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory used powerful navigation tools including the the Delta-Differential One-Way Ranging\u2014a kind of interplanetary radio tracking\u2014to provide the ESA with Psyche\u2019s exact position. Flight dynamics experts at the agency then designed the test while accounting for variables like air density, temperature, and the Earth\u2019s motion. Sections of Greece\u2019s airspace were also temporarily closed, just to be safe.<\/p>\n \u201cEnabling this two-way optical handshake meant overcoming two major technical challenges: developing a laser powerful enough to hit a distant spacecraft with pinpoint accuracy; and building a receiver sensitive enough to detect the faintest return signal, sometimes just a few photons, after a journey of hundreds of millions of kilometres,\u201d Sinda Mejri, project manager of the ESA\u2019s Ground Laser Receiver system, said.<\/p>\n The signal relay is the first of four planned exchanges this summer as part of NASA\u2019s Deep Space Optical Communications experiment aboard Psyche.<\/p>\n On a mission to investigate a metal-rich asteroid beyond Mars<\/a>, Psyche also carries the DSOC, a gold-capped laser transceiver designed to test long-distance communication systems for future space missions. In December 2023 for example, DSOC managed to beam a video of an orange tabby cat named Taters chasing a laser pointer<\/a> some 19 million miles (31 million km) back to Earth\u2014a technological feat of the highest order.<\/p>\n Psyche itself uses radio to talk to its handlers on Earth, but laser communication systems could significantly speed up the conversation.<\/p>\n While this test didn\u2019t involve sending any information to Psyche, optical communication systems can pack data into the oscillations of light waves in lasers, encoding messages into an optical signal that is carried to a receiver via infrared. These invisible beams\u2014to our eyes at least\u2014travel at the speed of light, carrying high-definition information from one point to another. This method enables data transmission rates some 10 to 100 times greater than the radio frequency systems used by spacecraft today, according to the agency.<\/p>\n \u201cCombining this technology with the ones we have for radio frequency communications is essential to transmit the ever-increasing data output of the missions exploring the universe,\u201d Andrea Di Mira, project manager of ESA\u2019s Ground Laser Transmitter system, said.<\/p>\n The entire process requires extreme precision: Laser beams are much narrower than radio signals, which means that that the DCOS\u2019s laser reply needs to be aimed in such a way that it takes into account Earth\u2019s orbit to determine where the ground-based receiver will be by the time the signal reaches it.<\/p>\n The experiment\u2019s success marks \u201ctruly a leap step towards bringing terrestrial internet like high-speed connectivity to our deep-space spacecraft,\u201d Rolf Densing, the agency\u2019s director of operations, said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scientists at the European Space Agency used a laser to communicate with a spacecraft 165 million miles (265…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12732,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[12474,12475,718,12476,79],"class_list":["post-12731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-esa","tag-laser-communication","tag-nasa","tag-psyche","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12731"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12731\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12732"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}