NASA's Psyche Spacecraft Fires Laser 10 Million Miles Away From Earth as It Heads Toward Mysterious Metal Asteroid

NASA's Psyche spacecraft has successfully fired a laser in a deep-space test. On November 14, NASA received a laser signal from an instrument aboard the Psyche spacecraft, currently over 10 million miles from Earth on its way to a mysterious metal asteroid.

This marked the first successful test of NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system, a groundbreaking communications link using laser light instead of traditional radio waves.

'First Light' Transmits a Near-Infrared Laser

In a statement from NASA, it said the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment achieved "first light" by transmitting a near-infrared laser encoded with test data from almost 10 million miles away to the Hale Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in California.

This accomplishment represents the farthest-ever demonstration of optical communications. DSOC is part of the Psyche spacecraft, which is on a two-year technology demonstration mission as it travels to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, DSOC's flight laser transceiver successfully locked onto an uplink laser beacon transmitted from the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL's Table Mountain Facility.

Trudy Kortes, director of Technology Demonstrations at NASA Headquarters, noted that achieving "first light" is a crucial milestone in DSOC's development, paving the way for higher-data-rate communications supporting future endeavors like sending humans to Mars.

The test involved sending test data via laser to and from deep space, demonstrating the potential for sending scientific information, high-definition imagery, and streaming video.

The DSOC team, in collaboration with the Psyche mission-support team, ensured that the technology demonstration did not interfere with the spacecraft's operations.

NASA noted that DSOC had to pass several milestones before this achievement, including unveiling the flight laser transceiver, powering up the instrument, and coordinating with the Psyche spacecraft's checkouts.

With the success of "first light," the DSOC team will focus on refining the systems controlling the downlink laser's pointing aboard the transceiver.

DSOC Experiment of NASA

The DSOC experiment aims to showcase data transmission rates surpassing current radio frequency systems used in spacecraft by 10 to 100 times.

By utilizing near-infrared laser communication, DSOC condenses data into considerably denser waves, augmenting the volume of data that ground stations can receive. This is pivotal for facilitating upcoming exploration missions and advanced high-resolution scientific instruments.

While optical communication has been successfully demonstrated in low Earth orbit and up to the Moon, DSOC stands as the inaugural trial of this technology in the expansive realm of deep space.

The experiment encounters the formidable task of precisely directing signals across vast distances, compensating for the time it takes for light to traverse from the spacecraft to Earth.

Despite the intricacies involved, the "first light" signifies a remarkable milestone in the progress of sophisticated communication technologies tailored for deep-space exploration.

"Achieving first light is a tremendous achievement. The ground systems successfully detected the deep space laser photons from DSOC's flight transceiver aboard Psyche," said Abi Biswas, project technologist for DSOC at JPL.