Posted on 11/23/2023 4:22:34 AM PST by Libloather
A NASA spacecraft has beamed a near-infrared laser nearly 10 million miles into space breaking new ground for the agency.
The laser, which is encoded with test data, was fired from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft and then sent back to Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, the agency said.
The test data was transmitted about 40 times farther than the distance between the moon and the earth, which NASA says is about 238,900 miles. The SpaceX Starship, for context, traveled around 93 miles into space last week.
The successful laser transmission, which NASA describes as a "first light," took place in the early hours of Nov. 14, when Psyche’s laser transceiver - a cutting-edge instrument capable of sending and receiving near-infrared signals - locked onto a powerful uplink laser sent from a telescope at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) near Wrightwood in California.
The uplink laser helped the flight transceiver aim its downlink laser back to Caltech’s Palomar Observatory. Automated systems on the transceiver and ground stations then fine-tune its pointing.
The first flight is a significant steppingstone toward increasing the amount of data that can be transmitted throughout the solar system, NASA said.
The space agency says it has long been able to communicate with spacecraft using radio frequencies, but has never been able to send information using lasers from that far into space.
NASA’s Psyche spacecraft was launched in October on SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and is on a larger mission to explore a metal-rich asteroid that may shed light on earth’s formation. The mission is part of NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
53.7 lightyears.
Actually SECONDS to reach 10 million miles.
Voyager 1 is 15 billion miles away and still sending signals.
On “The Expanse” they called this the ‘tight beam.’
“”””The test data was transmitted about 40 times farther than the distance between the moon and the earth, which NASA says is about 238,900 miles. The SpaceX Starship, for context, traveled around 93 miles into space last week.””””
This seems to be a petty jab by FOX at Elon regarding the SpaceX Starship
“Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California”
The tour of this facility is highly recommended!
That is the way I read it too.
Yes, it struck me as a jab at Elon. It was very out of place.
At the very bottom of the article it admits: NASA’s Psyche spacecraft was launched in October on SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket and is on a larger mission to explore a metal-rich asteroid that may shed light on earth’s formation.
They say that American Astronomy took off in the early 20th Century when Charles Pickering discovered women and George Ellery Hale discovered money. Pickering was famous for employing women as computers at the Harvard Observatory, while Hale, who enjoyed a privileged childhood in Chicago, was very successful at inducing large endowments from wealthy businessmen.
I’m not a SpaceX nor Elon Musk fan, but I didn’t take it that way. I wondered why they didn’t mention the use of radio transmission to talk to the Moon landing crafts. Would have been better context.
I guess because they assume everyone knows that. This a different type of transmission.
First, it's a tight beam. It's not blasting radio waves that everyone (enemies) can pickup.
Second, (just guessing here) it would be a higher data rate. The data we receive from Mars is exceedingly slow.
Interesting article, informative thread. Thanks for posting.
Some kid’s cat toy reflecting off of orbiting space trash.
Hopefully not bringing the Dark Overlord down the beam portal. (or Howard the Duck)
what’s the beam propagation at that distance???
Earth Just Received Laser-Beamed Cat Video From 19 Million Miles Away
https://www.iflscience.com/earth-just-received-laser-beamed-cat-video-from-19-million-miles-away-72077
thx...
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