© NASA/Ben SmegelskyNASA’s Psyche spacecraft “could use optical communications in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars.”
Earth just received a laser transmission from a world- (and perhaps universe) record-breaking 140 million miles away — which could have major implications for the future of space travel.
However, this correspondence wasn't extraterrestrial in origin: It was actually sent by NASA's Psyche spacecraft, which is currently located approximately 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
"This represents a significant milestone for the project by showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft's radio frequency comms system," Meera Srinivasan, the project's operations lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement.
This major breakthrough was achieved by using a Psyche feature called Deep Space Optical Communications, or DSOC, one of the droid's several task per Space.com. Its main directive is exploring 16 Psyche, the $100,000 quadrillion asteroid from which it takes its name.
© NASA/JPL-CaltechThis visualization shows the Psyche spacecraft's position on April 8 when the DSOC flight laser transceiver transmitted data at a rate of 25 Mbps over 140 million miles to a downlink station on Earth.
This achievement was particularly significant as, along with sending the laser message a record-breaking distance, NASA also managed to transmit actual data gathered from the spacecraft.
"We downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft data," explained Srinivasan. "Until then, we'd been sending test and diagnostic data in our downlinks from Psyche."
To wit, in November of last year, Psyche sent back to Earth from 10 million miles away, but it was pre-loaded test data and not any "real" info.
This marked the culmination of a series of messages sent by the probe since it launched on October 13th atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy Rocket.
During a prior dry run in December, Psyche beamed data back from 19 million miles away, sending it at the system's maximum rate of 267 megabits per second.
This correspondence — which included footage of an orange tabby cat named Taters — took around just over a minute and a half to reach earth, which is comparable to broadband internet speeds.
By contrast, this latest DSOC transmission was only 25 megabits. This was due to the fact that Psyche was seven times further away, reducing the speed at which it could send and receive messages.
Despite the comparatively syrupy speed, this nonetheless eclipsed the project's goal of "proving at least 1 Mbps was possible at that distance," per the release.
This watershed moment provides a taste of how spacecraft "could use optical communications in support of humanity's next giant leap: sending humans to Mars," NASA wrote.
Psyche is slated to fly by the Red Planet by 2026, whereupon it will fly toward its main destination, 16 Psyche, which it should reach by 2029.
Like the early pioneers' search for the Northwest Passage, it will aim to map out this final frontier El Dorado, which contains enough precious metals to crash the gold market.
Reader Comments
If they had any education, skills or experiences, they had a real job.
I think NASA is a CIA creation - and those of us in Gen-X - we are more than fedup - some of us ready to take it to the end - one lie too many - tis one lie too much. Ken
I have a few dozen NASA research reports stored away on some external harddisk of mine, older stuff from the '50s and '60s, dealing with rocket propellant characterisation and missile flight dynamics. Real science stuff, with real experiments and real measurements.
I think NASA and the US defense industry in general stopped to do R&D when the Eastern Bloc collapsed, with the complacent feeling of now being King Of The Hill. Instead, they tried to squeeze as much money out of old leftovers - like used cardealers.
Now they are 3 decades behind, unable to catch up ...
60minutes per hour/35.32 h^-1=1.7minutes
After reading the article, "going" with 19 million and expressing it simple:
19,000,000 miles / 186000 miles/second = 102.15 seconds /60 = 1.7 minutes as you say being their are 60 seconds in 1 minute - per standard earthling convention.
Thanks for the clarification, but I still question the veracity of the "speed of light" - because measurements require instruments and instruments have flaws - that is why I have gone on record that there is no way to "prove the beginning" - being the "proof" will require instruments with components formed after the beginning happened - there can't help but be bias in the measurement.
The beginning can never be known with certainty - that is why "faith" is so important in my humble opinion - tis also why I believe time travel is pure fantasy of the mind - not possible physically - in either direction beyond just a bit in the future incrementally when waves are in the air that some can sense.
~
BK
Beyond that, my humble opinion is something is amiss at NASA.
Regards,
BK
As for Mars, we've been there for almost thirty years. There is no knowledge to be gained by sending space janitors in bubble suits to stand on the rock and say 'Murica'.
much of it lately seems to be bs on top of bs doubling down until the lies create a tsunami of justified retribution from the peasants fucking direct - on planet Earth.
Directly sent with precision upon the harm causers and the liars - lied one time too many...I reckon...
When one considers that time dilation was 'borrowed' from Hendrik Lorentz, and if one discounts c, there's not much left of Relativity.
As for "relativity" - sons a bitches - tis all relative. My absolute presupposition though is that time moves on in a fixed manner - towards the future.
Thanks,
Ken
This correspondence — which included footage of an orange tabby cat named Taters — took around just over a minute and a half to reach earth, which is comparable to broadband internet speeds.
By contrast, this latest DSOC transmission was only 25 megabits.[...]"
I suppose the last sentence is meant to be "25 megabits per second", not an actual amount of data send, otherwise the comparison would not make sense.
Anyway, even this "syrupy" speed is actually in the range of the so called "broadband internet" in the USA, because FCC defines the broadband as anything which is 25 Mbps down/ 3 Mbps up (which isn't particularly high by today's standards). The speed is nonetheless good by space standards, because it's faster than radio transmission (it uses infrared laser, infrared is way higher frequency than radio).
Also as already noticed in the comments, a minute and a half of travel time at that distance is significantly faster than the speed of light, which would be quite newsworthy if true