As NASA continues to push the boundaries of space exploration, the space agency recently announced a major accomplishment in communication across the cosmos. NASA’s JPL recently revealed its Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) project was able to beam light 10 million miles through space.
“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:ย sending humans to Mars,” Trudy Kortes, director of Technology Demonstrations for the Space Technology Mission Directorate, said in a press release.
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“Tuesday morning’s test was the first to fully incorporate the ground assets and flight transceiver, requiring the DSOC and Psyche operations teams to work in tandem,” added Meera Srinivasan, operations lead for DSOC at JPL. “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.”
The distance the light was broadcast over is equal to the amount of over 40 times the distance between the moon and Earth. According to NASA, such a broadcast takes about 20 seconds to travel the staggering distance.
“Achieving first light is a tremendous achievement. The ground systems successfully detected the deep space laser photons from DSOC’s flight transceiver aboard Psyche,” continued Abi Biswas, project technologist for DSOC at JPL. “And we were also able to send some data, meaning we were able to exchange ‘bits of light’ from and to deep space.”
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