NASA Psyche Mission Successfully Tests Laser-Based Communication Technology, Achieving Milestone Communication Speeds

Jakarta –

The main objective of the Psyche mission launched by NASA on October 13, 2023 is to study the origin of the planet’s core and study the asteroid 16 Psyche.

However, the spacecraft had another goal, which is to test laser-based communication technology, as reported by detikINET from Techspot.

In testing the technology known as Deep Space Optical Communication (DSOC), NASA aims to test a laser-based data link at a distance greater than the distance from the Earth to the Moon, and they are says their experiment has significant achievements.

After introducing the radio frequency transmitter on the aircraft, NASA said that the DSOC module was successful in sending engineering data from the aircraft to Earth, a distance of 226 million KM and at a speed of 25Mbps.

According to Meera Srinivasan of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, they tried to send the data during an orbital pass on April 8, and successfully received data from the aircraft for 10 minutes.

Until three weeks ago, NASA engineers were only testing and sending diagnostic data through DSOC. Sending engineering data from the aircraft to Earth, according to Srinivasa, is a major achievement in the project. This is because it shows that optical based communication can be used effectively in conjunction with radio based communication systems.

Until now Psyche has relied solely on radio technology to send data to Earth, and DSOC has shown high performances in terms of communication speed. This is because the speed achieved can be 10 to 100 times faster than the radio system currently in use. However, this distance depends on the distance between the sender and the receiver.

For example, on December 11, 2023, DSOC can produce a data transmission speed of 267Mbps, much faster because it is only 31 million KM from Earth. Much higher than the speed of 25Mbps when it is 226 million KM from the Earth. NASA actually estimates that the transfer speed over that distance is only 1Mbps.

Apart from being dependent on speed, this DSOC system also has other weaknesses. That is, it needs clear skies as well as supporting weather conditions for communication to run smoothly. Compared to radio systems that are not too affected by the weather.

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(asj/rns)