Earth Receives Laser Transmission From Deep Space, 140 Million Miles Away

The asteroid named Psyche is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The robotic explorer Psyche, which is destined for this asteroid, was also on a mission to test laser communications.

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

During a successful laser communications demo, engineering data was transmitted 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, stated that about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft data were downlinked during a pass on April 8. This 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 if laser communications could perform as effectively, if not better, than traditional methods. NASA’s optical communications demonstration has proven it can transmit test data at a maximum rate of 267 Mbps using the flight laser transceiver’s near-infrared downlink laser.

However, the data transmission rate is lower as the spacecraft is now much farther away. During a test on April 8, the spacecraft successfully transmitted test data at a maximum rate of 25 Mbps, surpassing the project’s goal of proving at least 1 Mbps was achievable at that distance.

Psyche, en route to the Psyche 16 asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, is reportedly stable and healthy.