Posted on 02/18/2014 2:20:30 PM PST by Red Badger
Want this article to load more quickly? Read it in space.
Hong Kong has the world's fastest Internet. Internet on the moon is 10 times faster.
How do our lunar-exploring spaceships get buffer-free video? Lasers. NASA and MIT are shooting "lasers full of Internet" to a ship named LADEE that's exploring the moon's atmosphere. According to NASA, speeds have reached 622 megabits per second (Hong Kong tops out at 63.6).
Right now, the agency is using a pulsed laser beam to transmit a pair of HD video signals to and from the moon. The 239,000 miles between the New Mexico ground station and the moon marks the "longest two-way laser communication ever demonstrated," according to NASA.
In one test, NASA sent an HD video of Bill Nye (the science guy) from a Massachusetts station to the New Mexico transmitters to the moon—and back through the same route—with just a seven-second delay. It takes 1.3 seconds for a signal to make the one-way trip to the moon.
NASA says the information it's receiving now is so precise it can determine LADEE's distance from Earth to within half an inch.
"Suppose you wanted to make a Google Maps image of Mars, and not even as crisp as Google Maps," NASA's Don Boroson told the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. "It would take decades to send that much data back with radio systems we have now. If you had a laser communication system with a 50-times-higher data rate, it would take tens of weeks. Then you could send all the data for a Google Map in one year."
NASA says testing will soon expand to include signals from a European Space Agency station in Spain. Later tests will expand to include daylight operations and different cycles of the moon.
Space Ping!
Tech Ping!
Lots of throughput but the 3 second ping time sucks.
People put up with Skype, so 3 seconds is no big deal.......................
Why is everyone wearing goggles if the laser is pointed at the moon?...................
“Moon Lasers Are Creating the Galaxy’s Fastest Internet”
The galaxy is a very very very big place.
Warning! Do not look at laser with remaining eye!
Awesome!
Think of all the bandwidth-intensive MUSLIM OUTREACH N.A.S.A. could do..!!!!!!
Because the writers wrote it in the script.
Or perhaps when they were aiming it they were in closer proximity.
Funny show , though leftist written.
This is the biggest pile of gobbledygook ive ever read...
ok what the hell are they talking about..what the hell does sending data to the moon have to do with data transfer rate improving..it does the opposite.latency goes up because the distance traveled goes up...
are they talking bandwidth because again sending them to the moon has nothing to do with that ......are they talking free space optics?shooting a laser to the moon because of a lack of atmosphere...you still passing through the earths atmosphere...I even had to crack up when I talked about the moon’s atmosphere the moon has no atmosphere
3 second ping time is worthless for anything that requires any kind of response time. Would be okay for file transfers and streaming video, but that’s about it.
The main thing being described is the difference in speed between long-distance radio and light transmissions. We already know fiber has a faster maximum than copper, so it’s not a big deal. The big deal is when we can target a complete path on-the-fly.
Gee, they have rediscovered tech we were experimenting with in 1985.
Every generation finds something wonderful and new.
That isn’t new.
What is it that is amazing about this? Microwave and laser data transmission through the atmosphere has been around a long, long time. These speeds don’t seem to exciting, but I guess its good to bring to public attention.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.