The laser data transmission system on board Psyche is flying to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, transmitting data to Earth at a record distance.
Located aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, Deep Space Optical Communications technology continues to break records. While the spacecraft does not rely on optical communications to transmit data, the new technology demonstrates its ability to accomplish this task. Once connected to Psyche’s radio frequency transmitter, the laser communication system sends a copy of technical data over a distance of 225 million km, 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the Sun, Phys.org reported on April 25.
This achievement shows that spacecraft can use optical communications in the future, allowing the transmission of complex scientific information as well as high-resolution photos and videos at faster speeds to support the next big step forward. Humanity’s goal is to send people to Mars.
The laser communications technology in this prototype is designed to transmit data from deep space at speeds 10 – 100 times faster than modern radio frequency systems used by today’s missions. After launching on October 13, 2023, the spacecraft still operates well and stably on the journey to the main belt between Mars and Jupiter to visit the asteroid Psyche. NASA’s optical communications experiment demonstrated that the system could transmit test data at a maximum rate of 267 megabits per second (Mbps) from a near-infrared common-port laser in the laser transceiver during flight.
Previously, on December 11, 2023, the experiment transmitted a 15-second ultra-high resolution video to Earth from a distance of 31 million km, about 80 times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Along with much other test data, the video includes a digital version of the University of Arizona’s Psyche Inspired painting, uploaded to the in-flight laser transceiver before Psyche launched last year. Now, when the spacecraft is flying 7 times farther, the speed of transmitting and receiving data decreases as expected. In the April 8 test, the ship transmitted test data at a maximum speed of 25 Mbps, far exceeding the project’s goal of at least 1 Mbps at that distance.
The project team also sent commands to the transceiver to transmit data generated by Psyche using optical technology. While Psyche transmits data over a radio frequency channel to NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), the optical communications system simultaneously transmits some of that data to the Hale telescope at the Institute’s Palomar Observatory. California Technology (Caltech) in San Diego County, California.
After Psyche launched, the optical communications test system was initially used to download previously loaded data, including a video of a cat named Taters. The project then demonstrated that the transceiver could receive data from high-power lasers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL) Table Mountain facility near Wrightwood, California. Data can even be transmitted to the receiver, then transmitted back to Earth the same night.
The above experiment transmitted test data as well as digital images to the Psyche spacecraft and back to Earth on a round trip of 450 million kilometers. It also downloads a large amount of technical data of the test version to study the characteristics of optical communication links.