L’April 8, 2024 the space mission Psyche from NASA successfully sent data carried by a infrared laser beam who traveled for the beauty of 226 million kilometers in interplanetary space (1.5 times the distance between the Earth and the Sun) before being detected on the ground. This involves sending optical information from the greater distance never achieved in history. Psyche had already sent data to Earth via laser: in December, for example, the probe sent a video of a cat 11 million kilometers away. However, this is the first time the probe has sent via this technology real engineering data and not test data.
Psyche is a mission launched on October 13, 2023 with the aim of reaching the asteroid of the same name in 2026. On board is an innovative communications technology called Optical communications in deep space (DSOC) for sending data via a transceiver laserwhich complements traditional radio wave communication systems.
The reason is simple: in this way transmission speed The volume of information is much higher (up to 100 times) than that of radio communications. The April 8 broadcast, for example, went to 25Mbps (megabits per second), which is an impressive result considering the transmission distance: it is a rate dozens of times higher than the typical rate of radio waves and in any case much higher than the minimum objective of 1Mbps established by NASA for DSOC. (In December, thanks to the shorter distance, the speed reached 267Mbps.)
This technology serves as technology demonstrator for a new generation communication system useful for long-distance human missions, in particular for future human bases on March. Since the maximum distance between Earth and the Red Planet is approximately 375 million kilometers (2.5 times the Earth-Sun distance), NASA has prepared a new data transmission via DSOC to June this year, while it will be precisely the distance between Psyche and our planet. If everything works correctly, the technology demonstration will be considered a success and can be implemented to create a system for rapid communication of large amounts of data between Earth and Mars.
But the system It’s still not without problems. For example, a current limitation of DSOC is that clouds block laser propagation, while radio transmissions do not. Fortunately, this is not an unsolvable problem, especially if you can count on it. many possible reception points scattered across the globe.
