NASA’s Optical Comms Demo Transmits Data Over 140 Million Miles

NASA’s Deep Condo Optical Communications experiment additionally interfaced with the Psyche spacecraft’s dialog system for the first time, transmitting engineering files to Earth.

Utilizing aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraftthe agency’s Deep Condo Optical Communications technology demonstration continues to interrupt files. While the asteroid-hobble spacecraft doesn’t rely on optical communications to ship files, the recent technology has confirmed that it’s up to the job. After interfacing with the Psyche’s radio frequency transmitter, the laser communications demo despatched a duplicate of engineering files from over 140 million miles (226 million kilometers) away, 1½ times the gap between Earth and the Sun.

This fulfillment affords a sight into how spacecraft may maybe presumably utilize optical communications in the long walk, enabling elevated-files-charge communications of complex scientific files to boot as excessive-definition imagery and video in make stronger of humanity’s next huge jump: sending humans to Mars.

“We downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft files in the center of a circulation on April 8,” talked about Meera Srinivasan, the mission’s operations lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Till then, we’d been sending test and diagnostic files in our downlinks from Psyche. This represents a most predominant milestone for the mission by exhibiting how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft’s radio frequency comms system.”

The laser communications technology on this demo is designed to transmit files from deep residence at rates 10 to 100 times sooner than the affirm of the art radio frequency methods frail by deep residence missions as of late.

After launching on Oct. 13, 2023, the spacecraft stays wholesome and precise as it journeys to the most predominant asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to focus on with the asteroid Psyche.

NASA’s optical communications demonstration has shown that it will transmit test files at a maximum charge of 267 megabits per 2nd (Mbps) from the flight laser transceiver’s cease to-infrared downlink laser — comparatively charge a lot like broadband cyber internet score speeds.

That was once finished on Dec. 11, 2023, when the experiment beamed a 15-2nd ultra-excessive-definition video to Earth from 19 million miles away (31 million kilometers, or about 80 times the Earth-Moon distance). The video, at the side of other test files, at the side of digital versions of Arizona Assert College’s Psyche Impressed art work, had been loaded onto the flight laser transceiver sooner than Psyche launched final Twelve months.

Now that the spacecraft is better than seven times farther away, the charge at which it will ship and receive files is diminished, as anticipated. At some stage in the April 8 test, the spacecraft transmitted test files at a maximum charge of 25 Mbps, which far surpasses the mission’s aim of proving on the least 1 Mbps was once most likely at that distance.

The mission team additionally commanded the transceiver to transmit Psyche-generated files optically. While Psyche was once transmitting files over its radio frequency channel to NASA’s Deep Condo Network (DSN), the optical communications system simultaneously transmitted a fragment of the same files to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California — the tech demo’s most predominant downlink ground scheme.

“After receiving the solutions from the DSN and Palomar, we verified the optically downlinked files at JPL,” talked about Ken Andrews, mission flight operations lead at JPL. “It was once a tiny amount of files downlinked over a short timeframe, nonetheless the reality we’re doing this now has surpassed all of our expectations.”

After Psyche launched, the optical communications demo was once first and predominant frail to downlink pre-loaded files, at the side of the Taters the cat video. Since then, the mission has confirmed that the transceiver can receive files from the excessive-energy uplink laser at JPL’s Table Mountain facility, cease to Wrightwood, California. Data also can be despatched to the transceiver and then downlinked encourage to Earth on the same night, as the mission proved in a recent “turnaround experiment.”

This experiment relayed test files — to boot as digital pet pictures — to Psyche and encourage again, a round day out of up to 280 million miles (450 million kilometers). It additionally downlinked astronomical quantities of the tech demo’s possess engineering files to glimpse the characteristics of the optical communications hyperlink.

“We’ve learned a substantial deal about how far we can push the system when we discontinue bear sure skies, even though storms bear interrupted operations at both Table Mountain and Palomar occasionally,” talked about Ryan Rogalin, the mission’s receiver electronics lead at JPL. (Whereas radio frequency communications can aim in most climate instances, optical communications require comparatively sure skies to transmit excessive-bandwidth files.)

JPL currently led an experiment to combine Palomar, the experimental radio frequency-optical antenna on the DSN’s Goldstone Deep Condo Communications Complex in Barstow, California, and a detector at Table Mountain to receive the same signal in concert. “Arraying” multiple ground stations to mimic one astronomical receiver can aid enhance the deep residence signal. This scheme can additionally be recommended if one ground scheme is compelled offline attributable to climate instances; other stations can aloof receive the signal.

Managed by JPL, this demonstration is basically the most up-to-date in a chain of optical dialog experiments funded by the Technology Demonstration Missions (TDM) program below NASA’s Condo Technology Mission Directorate and the agency’s SCaN (Condo Communications and Navigation) program in the center of the Condo Operations Mission Directorate. Development of the flight laser transceiver is supported by MIT Lincoln Laboratory, L3 Harris, CACI, First Mode, and Managed Dynamics Inc., and Fibertek, Coherent, and Dotfast make stronger the ground methods. A number of the technology was once developed thru NASA’s Cramped Industry Innovation Research program.

Arizona Assert College leads the Psyche mission. JPL is liable for the mission’s total management, system engineering, integration and test, and mission operations. Psyche is the 14th mission selected as phase of NASA’s Discovery Program below the Science Mission Directorate, managed by the agency’s Marshall Condo Flight Heart in Huntsville, Alabama. NASA’s Birth Providers and products Program, based entirely on the agency’s Kennedy Condo Heart in Florida, managed the originate provider. Maxar Applied sciences supplied the excessive-energy photograph voltaic electrical propulsion spacecraft chassis from Palo Alto, California.

For additional info about the laser communications demo, consult with:

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/dsoc

Ian J. O’Neill
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-2649
[email protected]

2024-049