The feat was accomplished by a team at the Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, according to NASA, and was part of a series of tests of new technology that could provide live footage of astronauts on the lunar surface during the Artemis program.
The NASA blog goes on to say that historically, NASA has relied on radio waves to send and receive information to and from space, but laser communication uses infrared light to transmit data 10 to 100 times faster than radio frequency systems.
The blog further states that in collaboration with the Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research Program, engineers from Glenn Research Center temporarily installed a portable laser terminal in the fuselage of a Pilatus PC-12 aircraft. The engineers then flew over Lake Erie and transmitted data from the aircraft to an optical ground station in Cleveland. From there, the data was transmitted via a ground network to NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where scientists transmitted the data using infrared signals.
The signal was transmitted 22,000 miles from Earth to the Laser Communications Relay Demonstrator (LCRD), a NASA orbital laboratory platform. The LCRD then relayed the signal to the ILLUMA-T (Integrated LCRD LEO User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) payload aboard the orbital laboratory, which transmitted the data to Earth. During the experiment, a new system developed at Glenn, the High-Speed Delay Tolerant Network (HDTN), allowed the signal to penetrate clouds more effectively, the blog adds.
“Building on our success streaming 4K HD video to and from the space station, we can provide Artemis astronauts with future capabilities such as HD video conferencing, which will be important to crew health and coordination of activities,” said Dr. Daniel Leible, HDTN project principal investigator at Glenn Space Center.
James Demers, Glenn’s aircraft operations manager, added, “The team at Glenn is committed to ensuring new ideas don’t stay in the lab, but fly in real, relevant environments so this technology can mature and improve all of our lives.”
NASA continues to develop advanced scientific instruments to capture high-resolution data on the Moon and beyond, and the agency’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program is employing new technologies such as laser communications to transmit vast amounts of information back to Earth.
Published on July 27, 2024 at 10:16 IST
