NASA's Psyche spacecraft beams back a 'Hello' from 10 million miles away
- Reference: 1700247971
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/11/17/first_light_achieved_by_nasa/
- Source link:
At first glance, the [1]achievement isn't all that much. Sure, that's approximately 40 times farther than the Moon is from the Earth, but other probes still transmit from mind-bending distances. However, the potential benefit here is a considerable bump in data transmission rates.
The DSOC experiment hopes to demonstrate data transmission rates 10 to 100 times greater than the state-of-the-art radio frequency systems used by spacecraft today.
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The rate bump is important considering the ever-increasing complexity of modern spacecraft payloads that capture prodigious amounts of data to be squirted back at ground stations on Earth. Onboard storage and computing provide some mitigation, but at some point, the data is required back at base.
The technology itself is not particularly new. Optical communication has been demonstrated in low Earth orbit and out to the Moon, but DSOC is a first since it is run in a deep space environment. NASA said: "Like using a laser pointer to track a moving dime from a mile away, aiming a laser beam over millions of miles requires extremely precise 'pointing.'"
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"First light" was achieved on November 14 as the flight laser transceiver aboard Psyche locked onto the uplink laser beacon transmitted from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California. The uplink beacon helped the transceiver aim its downlink laser back to a facility approximately 100 miles (130 kilometers) south of Table Mountain. Automated systems took care of the fine-tuning.
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While both radio and the near-infrared laser used by DSOC harness electromagnetic waves to transmit the data, the significantly tighter waves of near-infrared light mean ground stations can receive more data. And more data means more science.
"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. "And we were also able to send some data, meaning we were able to exchange 'bits of light' from and to deep space."
[8]
Meera Srinivasan, operations lead for DSOC at JPL, said: "It was a formidable challenge, and we have a lot more work to do, but for a short time, we were able to transmit, receive, and decode some data." There is indeed a way to go. The next step will be refining how the downlink laser aboard the transceiver is pointed to demonstrate sustained high-bandwidth data transmission back to Earth.
While all this is happening, check-outs are still being performed on the Psyche spacecraft ahead of arriving at its target asteroid in 2028. DSOC is not transmitting mission data, but there is every chance the technology will be used in future missions. ®
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[1] https://www.nasa.gov/missions/psyche-mission/nasas-deep-space-optical-comm-demo-sends-receives-first-data/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/07/nasa_asteroid_psyche_mission/
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZVfwld@HyK3gKzyDDDg91QAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2023/10/12/nasas_psyche_delay/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2023/08/29/nasa_iss_broadband/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/22/titanic_nfts/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/25/osirisrex_sample_return_success/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_offbeat/science&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZVfwld@HyK3gKzyDDDg91QAAAJM&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Great work!
The original article states both units. Even more weird: Throughout United States of America it seems to be a law for more than a decade to state both units everywhere? So the transition to metric is on the way and will probably finished in 150 years since it is not forced to abandon the imperial system, like they could in monarchy or dictatorship countries. 150 years as "will take two generations".
Impressive.
Yes Voyager can be received too, but at the distance of Voyager anyone on any of our inner planets (yes, including Jupiter) can receive the signal. Jupiter because its orbit is below the 2° limit another article at Nasa mentioned as precision limit for the voyager antenna to receive a signal. Saturn is is beyond that limit, at least half of the time.
Doing the same with laser is another dimension of precision, I suspect they need to more precise then "just earth", rather "which region of earth". I would love to know what size the beam has one it arrives here, but that details is not even in the original article. Maybe just a few hundred km, or less than 100 km? maybe less than 10? Each size difference makes a huge difference on the precision to aim, on top of the "moving objects" problem the original article mentioned.
@Reg: Nice article!
1, 2, 3, ...
The detector on earth is a 5.1m telescope with a "photon counting detector". When the transmitter is out Jupiter's way, not too many photons will be arriving.
One little piggy, two little piggies, three little piggies, four.
Please state the nature of your emergency
Scientists: We found the least noisy IR frequency, modulated it with the least noisy intermediate frequency, then modulated that again with the least noisy bandwidth for signal encoding.
Aliens: Yes, it's free of noise because it's reserved for distress calls. Please stop sending JP2 images and telemetry.
well, that explains it...
So that's why my cat suddenly went crazy a few days ago...Lasers from space!
Nice to see science catching up with science fiction
As far as I can see, Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle used this mechanism in the seventies in The Mote in God's Eye (and invented the mobile phone as computer at the same time!)
So one of these both for NASA and Niven (sadly too late for Pournelle) --->
So they probably need to calculate where the spacecraft is expected to be when the light arrives in order to lead the target.
Great work!
Please, this standardisation on US units is insane when it comes to science which sticks with SI and derived units for a reason. 10^9 m should either be expressed as km or using astronomical units (light seconds, minutes etc.) when distances get really, well, astronomical.
But let this rant not detract from what really is a fantastic achievement!