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Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC)
- jacquesm 3y agoOne of the first things people thought when they detected pulsars is that they were attempts by aliens to communicate across lightyears. https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200602/history.cfm https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200602/history.cfm
- nick238 3y agoIs there anything new about this? Psyche's flying around, but hasn't had much data to return. There was a proposed Mars Telecommunications Orbiter way back when which had a laser data link, but it was cancelled as they were able to up the data rates of existing satellites and/or use other science satellites to push bits when they were otherwise idle. The DSN could use a single antenna to listen to multiple spacecraft in the same spot if they're on different frequencies, so it was also like free capacity (free dish...still need really expensive, really sensitive demuxers behind them)
- dylan604 3y agoNew? You mean other than the fact that it was a successful test of a new way of communicating from "deep" space? No, you're right, we've been receiving data from satellites for a long time. Totally changing the method in which those probes communicate is totally just meh. <smashesHeadIntoTabletop>
- sholladay 3y agoHow much bandwidth are we talking about? 1 Mbps? 10 Mbps? I read most of the fact sheet but it doesn’t seem to provide an answer other than “10x state of the art radio”. Anyway, this is very cool. And it’s an important change if we live in the dark forest solution of the Fermi paradox. :)
- pseudosavant 3y agoThe test they performed recently streamed ~265mbps from Psyche to Earth
- Arrath 3y agoLet me take a breath and not get salty about the internet service options available to my parents.
- mfwit 3y agoLooks like they hit 267Mbps at 19 million miles away on Dec 11th. https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-tech-demo-streams-first-video-from-deep-space-via-laser https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-tech-demo-streams-first-...
- p1mrx 3y agoI wonder what sort of rate they'll get at Mars distance (400 million km)? Psyche's orbit is beyond Mars, so we're likely to find out if the spacecraft stays operational.
- mfwit 3y agoThis pdf is like 10yrs old, but graph in the top right outlines the rate based on distance. https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/july2014/posters/9-DSOC_OPAG_Poster.pdf https://www.lpi.usra.edu/opag/july2014/posters/9-DSOC_OPAG_P...
- p1mrx 3y agohttps://i.imgur.com/O9P58EG.png https://i.imgur.com/O9P58EG.png The first line is around 267 Mbps, so it looks like they're expecting 10 Mbps at max distance to Mars.
- LoveMortuus 3y agoThat's still a really good speed, but I think the bigger question might be latency.
- inamberclad 3y agoAfter trying to pack my status and health report uplink from my application into a quarter of a bit per second, I'm pretty excited about improving the bandwidth from space systems.