Earth Receives Laser Message From 140 Million Miles Away In Deep Space

The asteroid Psyche is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The robotic explorer Psyche, equipped with the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system, aims to test laser communications and make it possible across vast distances in space. Although Psyche mainly uses radio frequency communication, the optical communications technology has proved its capability. The laser communications demo successfully transmitted engineering data from over 140 million miles away, demonstrating its potential for faster connections than current methods.

The DSOC interfaced with Psyche’s radio transmitter, enabling the transmission of information and engineering data directly from the spacecraft back to Earth. Meera Srinivasan, the project’s operations lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), mentioned that they downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft data during a pass on April 8. The duplicated data was transmitted via laser communications, while the original Psyche data was sent to ground control using standard radio-frequency communications channels on NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). NASA’s optical communications demonstration has proven it can transmit test data at a maximum rate of 267 Mbps, similar to broadband internet speeds.

Although the spacecraft is now much farther away, it successfully transmitted test data at a maximum rate of 25 Mbps, exceeding the project’s goal of proving at least 1 Mbps was achievable at that distance. Psyche is reportedly stable and healthy as it makes its way towards the Psyche 16 asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.