NASA fired its space lasers to communicate with the ISS

NASA researchers have successfully tested laser communications successful abstraction by streaming 4K video footage originating from an airplane successful nan entity to nan International Space Station and back.

The feat demonstrates that nan abstraction agency could supply unrecorded sum of a Moon landing during nan Artemis missions and bodes good for nan development of optical communications that could link humans to Mars and beyond. NASA usually uses power waves to nonstop information and talk betwixt nan aboveground to abstraction but says that laser communications utilizing infrared ray tin transmit information 10 to 100 times faster than radios.

Engineers fitted an airplane pinch a portable laser terminal, past it flew complete Lake Erie and sent information backmost to nan halfway successful Cleveland. The information was past transmitted done a terrestrial web to NASA’s New Mexico trial facility, wherever scientists controlled nan process of beaming information up to nan agency’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) outer 22,000 miles away. The LCRD past relayed it to nan ILLUMA-T (Integrated Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Low Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) connected nan ISS.

Although Artemis missions person been delayed, nan 4th 1 that takes humans backmost to nan Moon is still connected way for 2028. By then, we mightiness spot clear 4K livestreams of astronauts connected nan Moon displayed connected mainstream 8K TVs.