Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC), a laser space communication system, of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has achieved "first light" as it successfully transmitted data through laser over a distance of 10 million miles.
NASA said on Nov 16 that the DSOC experiment beamed data encoded within a near-infrared laser to the Hale Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California.
The distance was about 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth, as it became the farthest-ever demonstration of optical communications.
trending now
DSOC is placed aboard the recently launched Psyche spacecraft. It is configured to send high-bandwidth test data to Earth during its two-year technology demonstration.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California manages both DSOC and the Psyche mission which is travelling to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter after being launched on October 13 this year.
The space agency said that the tech demo achieved "first light" in the early hours of Nov 14 after its flight laser transceiver, which is a cutting-edge instrument aboard Psyche.
As per the space agency, the instrument is capable of sending and receiving near-infrared signals, which are locked onto a powerful uplink laser beacon transmitted from the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL's Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California.
'Achieving first light is one of many critical DSOC milestones'
NASA said that the uplink beacon helped the transceiver aim its downlink laser back to Palomar (which is 130 kilometres, south of Table Mountain) while automated systems on the transceiver and ground stations fine-tuned its pointing.
As quoted by NASA, Trudy Kortes, director of Technology Demonstrations at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said: "Achieving first light is one of many critical DSOC milestones in the coming months, paving the way toward higher-data-rate communications capable of sending scientific information, high-definition imagery, and streaming video in support of humanity's next giant leap: sending humans to Mars."
The US-based space agency said that the test data also was sent simultaneously via the uplink and downlink lasers — a procedure known as "closing the link" that is a primary objective for the experiment.
As quoted, Meera Srinivasan, operations lead for DSOC at JPL, said: "Tuesday morning’s test was the first to fully incorporate the ground assets and flight transceiver, requiring the DSOC and Psyche operations teams to work in tandem. It was a formidable challenge, and we have a lot more work to do, but for a short time, we were able to transmit, receive, and decode some data."
https://news.google.com/rss/articles/CBMid2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3Lndpb25ld3MuY29tL3NjaWVuY2UvbmFzYXMtZGVlcC1zcGFjZS1vcHRpY2FsLWNvbW0tYWNoaWV2ZXMtZmlyc3QtbGlnaHQtYXMtaXQtc2VuZHMtYW5kLXJlY2VpdmVzLWRhdGEtNjYxMDg40gF7aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud2lvbmV3cy5jb20vc2NpZW5jZS9uYXNhcy1kZWVwLXNwYWNlLW9wdGljYWwtY29tbS1hY2hpZXZlcy1maXJzdC1saWdodC1hcy1pdC1zZW5kcy1hbmQtcmVjZWl2ZXMtZGF0YS02NjEwODgvYW1w?oc=5
2023-11-21 07:01:33Z
2619045304
Tidak ada komentar:
Posting Komentar