2023-12-21 14:14:16
It turns out NASA is just as keen on sharing cat videos as we are. In order to improve space communication capabilities, NASA’s Psyche mission not only went to detect asteroids, but also conducted a demonstration of deep space optical communication (DSOC) technology. On December 11, the spacecraft instrument broke the record from 31 million kilometers away (regarding 80 times the distance between the earth and the moon). ) sends back an ultra-high-definition streaming video, but the protagonist is not a great man, just a fat cat.
The Psyche mission was launched on October 13 this year. It aims to go to the main asteroid belt to explore the exposed metallic core of the ancient M-type asteroid Psyche (16 Psyche). Studying this object will help to better understand the formation of rocky planets.
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But the Psyche spacecraft has an additional mission: to perform NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) demonstration. This technology uses laser light to transmit and receive data from distant spacecraft. The speed is 10 to 100 times higher than the current most advanced radio system, and it can also perform high-bandwidth video.
On December 11, a video featuring Taters the cat (a pet of a NASA employee) was successfully transmitted back to Earth from a distance of 31 million kilometers through the DSOC experiment.
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NASA used a laser transceiver to transmit this approximately 15-second test video. The encoded near-infrared light signal was sent at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267 Mbps. It took 101 seconds to reach the Hale telescope on Earth from the moving Psyche spacecraft, and then the video Every frame is sent “instantly” to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for real-time playback.
Although the transmission distance is tens of millions of kilometers away from the earth, the technology can send video faster than most broadband Internet connections. Using narrow laser beams to communicate with a spacecraft 300 million kilometers away is a huge challenge, but success will provide deep insights into the future. Space missions open up new possibilities, such as sending more complex messages, high-definition images, and real-time video, to promote the vision of humans landing on Mars.
(Source of first picture:NASA）
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