One of the big problems of space travel is communication. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, also known as the NASAhas managed to ensure that the Earth receives a message sent by laser from about 16 million kilometers.
A key factor in all this is the Psyche ship, which had already demonstrated the use of lasers in 2023 to cover optical communication capacity, according to a report on the Xataka website.
The test known as the Deep Space Optical Communications Experiment (DSOC) consists of sending an infrared laser encoded with data. This ranges from the satellite to the Hale telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego, California.
The Psyche spacecraft was launched into space by SpaceX and its destination was a metallic asteroid orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. The ship was equipped with the necessary instruments to carry out the test.
Now that the effectiveness is known, the Xataka report points out that NASA has highlighted that this is the first test of optical communications in deep space.
There are still challenges such as improving the transmission speed, since there is a period of time in which the Earth and the ship change position. However, they emphasize that it is an initial step towards the development of high-speed communication systems.