Space optics11/21/2023 As an additional challenge, the photons will take longer to reach their destination, creating a lag of over 20 minutes at the tech demo's farthest distance. The farther Psyche travels from our planet, the fainter the laser photon signal will become, making it increasingly challenging to decode the data. DSOC will encounter unique challenges.ĭSOC is intended to demonstrate high-rate transmission of data of distances up to 240 million miles (390 million kilometers)-more than twice the distance between the sun and Earth-during the first two years of Psyche's six-year journey to the asteroid belt. The transmitter will deliver a modulated laser signal to DSOC's flight transceiver and serve as a beacon, or pointing reference, so that the returned laser beam can be accurately aimed back to Earth.ĭata sent from the flight transceiver will be collected by the 200-inch (5.1-meter) Hale Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, which has been equipped with a special superconducting high-efficiency detector array.ģ. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California will host the operations team, and a high-power near-infrared laser transmitter has been integrated with the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL's Table Mountain facility near Wrightwood, California. There is no dedicated infrastructure on Earth for deep space optical communications, so for the purposes of DSOC, two ground telescopes have been updated to communicate with the flight laser transceiver. But the transceiver is just one part of the technology demonstration. The laser transceiver features both a near-infrared laser transmitter to send high-rate data to Earth and a sensitive photon-counting camera to receive a laser beam sent from Earth. The DSOC flight laser transceiver is an experiment attached to NASA's Psyche spacecraft, but Psyche relies on traditional radio communications for mission operations. The tech demo involves equipment both in space and on Earth. ![]() Learn more about how DSOC will be used to test high-bandwidth data transmission beyond the Moon for the first time – and how it could transform deep space exploration. This will better enable future human and robotic exploration missions, along with supporting higher-resolution science instruments. Much like fiber optics replacing old telephone lines on Earth as demand for data grows, going from radio communications to optical communications will allow increased data rates throughout the solar system, with 10 to 100 times the capacity of state-of-the-art systems currently used by spacecraft. Until now, NASA has used only radio waves to communicate with missions that travel beyond the moon. DSOC is the first time NASA will test how lasers could increase data transmission from deep space. Here are five things to know about this cutting-edge technology demonstration:ġ. 12, DSOC will test key technologies designed to enable future missions to transmit denser science data and even stream video from the Red Planet. Launching with NASA's Psyche mission to a metal-rich asteroid of the same name on Thursday, Oct. NASA's pioneering Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment will be the first demonstration of laser, or optical, communications from as far away as Mars.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |