Earth Receives Laser Message from Deep Space 140 Million Miles Away

The asteroid, named Psyche, is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. As well as being destined for the asteroid, the spacecraft has a secondary mission to test laser communications.

Equipped with the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system, Psyche aims to make laser communication possible across long distances in space, offering much faster connections than current methods. Although Psyche primarily uses radio frequency communication, the optical communications technology has proven its capability.

In a notable achievement, the laser communications demo successfully transmitted engineering data from over 140 million miles away, which is 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the sun, after interfacing with Psyche’s radio frequency transmitter. The DSOC also successfully interfaced with Psyche’s radio transmitter, allowing it to transmit 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) in Southern California, revealed 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).

The objective was to assess whether laser communications could perform as effectively, if not better, than traditional methods. NASA’s optical communications demonstration has proven its ability to transmit test data at a maximum rate of 267 Mbps using the flight laser transceiver’s near-infrared downlink laser, similar to broadband internet speeds.

During a test on April 8, the spacecraft 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.