CNN —An innovative experiment flying aboard NASA’s Psyche mission just hit its first major milestone by successfully carrying out the most distant demonstration of laser communications. The tech demo was designed to be the US space agency’s most distant experiment of high-bandwidth laser communications, testing the sending and receiving of data to and from Earth using an invisible near-infrared laser. NASA/JPL-CaltechIt’s not the first time laser communications have been tested in space. The first test of two-way laser communication occurred in December 2021 when NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration launched and went into orbit about 22,000 miles (35,406 kilometers) from Earth. And the Artemis II spacecraft will use laser communications to return high-definition video of a crewed journey around the moon.

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Persons: Psyche, DSOC, Hale, ”, Trudy Kortes, Meera Srinivasan, Artemis, DSOC won’t, Jason Mitchell Organizations: CNN, NASA, Optical Communications, California Institute of Technology’s, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, Caltech, Space Technology, Psyche’s, Hale, DSOC, NASA’s, Advanced Communications, Navigation Technologies, NASA’s Space Communications Locations: Pasadena , California, DSOC, Wrightwood , California