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Spacecraft transmit power and antenna size is limited. This means the amount of power that arrives at earth is rather low because microwaves spread out quite a
by gene-h 7y ago
Spacecraft transmit power and antenna size is limited. This means the amount of power that arrives at earth is rather low because microwaves spread out quite a bit with distance. The other issue is that NASA only has so many big radio dishes in the deep space network[0] to gather this small amount of power and extract a signal. Technology has improved, but in order to get much higher bandwidth we'd need bigger dishes. We also need at least three around the globe to get continuous coverage. Although perhaps by the time this mission lands we could have multi-kilometer aperture receivers on the ground or in space. Laser communication could allow for much higher bandwidth, because lasers have a shorter wavelength they don't spread out as much with distance. However, laser space communication is in its infancy and would not work well on Titan due to the smog.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Deep_Space_Network
- gdrift 7y agoMaybe workaround transmission power by reflecting and modulating a signal over an existing power source. Like a very big mirror with an LCD pixel in front of it.