In 2023, NASA sends the Psyche spacecraft to the space with the mission of orbit and study the 16 Psyche metal asteroid, a rocky body located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, with a diameter of approximately 280 km. Psyche, which is not only the personification of the soul in Greek mythology, It also literally means “cold air”, your task will begin in 2029.
Now, according to a NASA statement, the stations on planet Earth have Sent and received messages transmitted by laser from Psyche, more than 350 million kilometers away. To give us an idea, the average distance to Mars is 225 million kilometers.
This advance in optical communication demonstrates that NASA The bases for high -speed data links for future human missions to Mars are laying.
The spacecraft is equipped with a laser transception, designed to send and receive data encoded in light rays from two land stations on Earth. After the exit of the rays of our planet, The JPL Mountain Table installation triggers a 3 kilowatt laser beacon towards the shipwhich helps Psyche look more on the earth.
But even at the speed of light, The laser takes several minutes to travel the huge distance between Earth and Psychche, both moving at very high speeds. When optical information finally reaches the spacecraft, it will return its own “message” to Earth.
To detect this faint signal in the distance, scientists resort to the Palomar Observatory of Caltech, a gigantic dome capable of detecting the timdist flashes of light throughout the solar system. Incentive photons go to a sophisticated set of detectors where the data they transport are carefully decodedtransforming weak flashes into significant information. Optical communications have previously been used to send messages from space; In fact, they have already been made 64 times in the past.
Long -distance spacecraft normally communicates by radio waves. This is how we still receive information from Voyager 1 and 2, The iconic twin probes of the 1970s that have long abandoned our solar system (The first in 2012 and his younger sister in 2018). However, optical communications, such as lasers, are potentially a much better option, since they can transmit many more data at much greater speeds.
In December 2023, scientists They managed to use laser rays for Transmit an ultraalta video definition to Earth from a distance of 31 million kilometers. The video is a 15 -second clip of a cat pursuing a laser point.
“In two years, this technology overcame our expectations -explains Clayton Turner, associate administrator of the Directorate of Space Technology Missions at the NASA headquarters -,, demonstrating data speeds comparable to those of the domestic broadband Internet and sending engineering and testing data to the land from record distances. ”
In this case, the distance traveled by the laser has multiplied by more than 10 with respect to the emission of 2023, which means that technology, with more adjustments, could be used to communicate signals between Earth and Mars, where NASA (and other countries) They hope to send human astronauts soon. It is precisely this type of technology that could allow us to see the live broadcast of an astronaut walking and playing golf on the Martian surface.