Eventually it is going to be laser communications, I think. They are going to test deep space laser communications on the upcoming "Psyche"-mission, launching i

Eventually it is going to be laser communications, I think. They are going to test deep space laser communications on the upcoming "Psyche"-mission, launching in 2022. The target asteroid will be at a distance of approximately 15 lightminutes (according to Wolfram Alpha) from Earth in 2026 when the probe is expected to arrive there. This is as far from Earth as Mars currently is. They hope to increase the bandwidth by an order of magnitude or two (i.e. 10-100 times). The link is supposed to be bidirectional, so the spacecraft can receive optical transmissions as well. I assume this laser uplink is more proof of concept than actually needed? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(spacecraft)#Science_payload https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psyche_(spacecraft)#Science_pa... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Optical_Communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Space_Optical_Communicati...