The technological feat, using NASA's Psyche probe, broke new ground for deep space communications.
AdvertisementNASA has achieved a world-first after sending a laser-beamed message to Earth from nearly 10 million miles away within 50 seconds.
While the space agency has long been able to communicate with spacecraft using radio waves, it had never before been able to send information using lasers from that far into space.
The feat, achieved using NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment on board the Psyche spacecraft, could someday allow humans to stream video calls on Mars.
The spacecraft then beamed back information using its laser.
Persons:
—, Lacey Young, Peter Rubin, Abi Biswas, Biswas, Trudy Kortes, Psyche
Organizations:
NASA, Service, Optical Communications, Jet Propulsion, Hale, JPL, Caltech, Arizona State Univ, Systems, ASU, Technology, Space Technology
Locations:
Wrightwood , California, San Diego County , California, Arizona, Palomar