NASA’s laser messaging from 1.6 million kilometers away

Washington: The American space agency NASA has successfully tested a laser signal from a space craft at a distance of 16 million kilometers.
The US space agency said in a statement that a laser-assisted message sent from spacecraft millions of kilometers away has the potential to transform space communications.
The receipt of the message indicates the success of NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment. This is the first time that laser data has been successfully transmitted from a spacecraft 40 times farther than the Moon.
At present, communication with all spacecraft in space is done with the help of radio signals, while signals are sent and received from large antennas installed on Earth. Although this means of messaging has proven to be reliable, it has limited bandwidth which means it is slow and impossible to send large files like HD photos and videos.
According to the space agency, NASA’s work on DSOC aims to use optical communication through lasers. This technology can improve the data rate by up to 100 times.
The first attempt to test this technology at greater distances from the Moon was carried out as NASA’s Psyche mission. The mission, launched last month, was to study an asteroid in space far from Earth.
The spacecraft is equipped with a laser transceiver that can both receive and transmit near-infrared laser signals.
NASA says the ‘First Light’ success is part of a series of experiments that give it hope that laser technology could prove effective.