© Mark Ollig
For more than 60 years, NASA has been using the traditional radio-frequency (RF) wave spectrum for communicating with its spacecraft and satellites.
Soon, we will find ourselves living in 2022, and NASA knows future space missions will require enhanced communications capabilities.
NASA is testing its spacecraft and satellites using “light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation,” or laser, for communication transmission and reception.
Using laser optical communications with satellites and other spacecraft will drastically increase their transfer-rate throughput speed.
These optical laser enhancements will significantly benefit space mission communications, with 100 times more spectrum bandwidth than currently used RF systems.
Using optical lasers will significantly improve voice and video communications from astronauts aboard the International Space Station and future spacecraft on the moon and Mars.
Laser communications will greatly assist NASA in obtaining data from satellites traversing within our solar system and those traveling into deep space exploring distant celestial objects.
According to NASA, the “pinpoint precision of laser communications” is well-suited to the goals of NASA mission planners.
“Laser technology is ideal for boosting downlink communications from deep space,” said Abi Biswas, the supervisor of the Optical Communications Systems group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA.
Other advantages of laser communications include receiving greatly-improved photographic image resolution and video from satellites or spacecraft missions to other planets.
Future astronauts performing an extravehicular activity, or from inside their spacecraft will select and view optical laser video feeds from the ground to aid in quickly completing various tasks.
NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is currently in orbit around the Red Planet.
Its mission is to expand our scientific understanding of Mars, paving the way for our current robotic missions and helping NASA prepare to send humans there.
The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter transmits data at a minimum of 500 kbps (kilo, or thousand bits per second) from its furthest distance away from Earth, about 250 million miles; currently, it is about 232 million miles.
If the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter used optical laser communication technology, its estimated data rate speed to Earth would be around 250 Mbps (megabits per second).
NASA’s Deep Space Network RF antennas are located in Australia, Spain, and California. These are primarily used for X-band (8 to 12 GHz) radio frequency range communications with the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter via ultra-high frequency antennas.
In 2013, NASA first demonstrated an optical communications laser’s effectiveness, reliability, and long life operation in space through an experimental launch of a laser-equipped communications relay satellite with the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD) mission.
The mission’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environmental Explorer (LADEE) satellite launched Sept. 6, 2013, and aligned itself in the proper orbit over the moon.
NASA technicians prepared LADEE’s onboard communications laser system for the test.
NASA’s ground station, located in White Sands Complex in Las Cruces, NM, activated its communications laser beam Oct. 18, 2013, which traveled 239,000 miles to the LADEE spacecraft in lunar orbit.
The LADEE satellite used a communications laser beam focused on a particular ground transmitting/receiving station on Earth.
The download data speed of the satellite information sent to the Earth from the moon reached a fantastic maximum rate of 622 Mbps.
The LLCD mission proved laser communications could be successfully transmitted to Earth from a satellite in space with more incredible speed and efficiency than current RF signaling methods.
Unfortunately, the LADEE ended up crashing onto the moon’s surface a couple of months later; however, it did answer the vital question about successfully using long-range laser communications in space.
The next high-profile NASA laser test is the LCRD (Laser Communications Relay Demonstration) mission. It will launch this month from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.
LCRD will be the payload aboard a US Department of Defense Space Force STPSat-6 spacecraft using a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket.
This mission will last for two years and test long-term regularly-used laser communications from the Earth-orbiting International Space Station and ground stations in Hawaii and California.
LCRD will downlink data over optical signals at a rate of 1.2 gigabits per second, which is double the 622Mbps from the 2013 Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration.
NASA hopes the LCRD mission will be the prelude to launching future laser-communications equipped satellite, robotic, and other spacecraft missions to the moon, Mars, the other planets, and missions eventually traveling beyond our solar system.
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center developed LCRD.
In 2018, NASA announced a closer study of the TRAPPIST-1 solar system, located some 40 light-years from Earth, revealed seven planets, some of which may be holding far more water than the oceans of Earth.
Perhaps, future generations on Earth will use optical laser communications technology to communicate with space satellites sent to the TRAPPIST-1 solar system containing Earth-like exoplanets, where life may have evolved.
Stay tuned.
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| Illustration of NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration communicating over laser links. Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center |
