NASA's Psyche hits 25 Mbps from 140 million miles away – enough for Ultra HD Netflix
- Reference: 1714206610
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/27/nasa_psyche_data_speeds/
- Source link:
The payload is riding aboard the Psyche probe, which is headed for an asteroid of the same name. On December 11, when the spacecraft was 19 million miles (31 kilometers) away, it reached 267 Mbps, which NASA described as "comparable to broadband internet download speeds."
NASA has better broadband than this writer, it would seem.
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However, as Psyche has continued on its trajectory, the distances have become greater, and the rate at which data can be transmitted and received has tumbled. At 140 million miles, the project's goal was to reach a lofty 1 Mbps. Instead, engineers [2]managed to get 25 Mbps out of the demonstration.
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Earlier demonstrations tested the technology using preloaded data, such as a cat video. The latest experiment used a copy of engineering data also sent via Psyche's radio transmitter.
[5]NASA confirms nuclear-powered Dragonfly drone is going to Titan
[6]NASA makes purrrr-fect deep space transmission of cat vid
[7]NASA's Psyche spacecraft beams back a 'Hello' from 10 million miles away
[8]Falcon Heavy sends NASA probe to metal-rich asteroid Psyche
"We downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft data during a pass on April 8," said Meera Srinivasan, the project's operations lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.
"Until then, we'd been sending test and diagnostic data in our downlinks from Psyche. This represents a significant milestone for the project by showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft's radio frequency comms system."
The demonstrator is only along for the ride – Psyche uses conventional radio technology for its mission. However, the demonstration does point to the potential for higher-bandwidth communications in future projects.
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Assuming the weather cooperates.
"We've learned a great deal about how far we can push the system when we do have clear skies, although storms have interrupted operations at both Table Mountain and Palomar on occasion," said Ryan Rogalin, the project's receiver electronics lead at JPL.
Relatively clear skies are required for optical communications, whereas slower radio communications are less weather-dependent. In one recent experiment, engineers arranged an antenna in one location and a detector in another to receive the same signal in concert. The approach could also be applied to ground stations to handle a receiver being forced offline by weather conditions. ®
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[2] https://www.nasa.gov/missions/psyche-mission/nasas-optical-comms-demo-transmits-data-over-140-million-miles/
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/17/nasa_confirms_dragonfly_mission/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2023/12/20/nasa_psyche_cat_video/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/17/first_light_achieved_by_nasa/
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[10] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Weather conditions are for Earth
ESA, DARPA and Starlink have been using laser links in space for years.
Where is the "corrections"link?
"... when the spacecraft was 19 million miles (31 kilometers) ..."
Seems someone got the maths wrong
Does anyone know why the data rate decreases with increasing distance?
The only thing I can think of is that they have to use more and more data for error correction. Any other reason?
Because laser beams are not perfectly coherent. The larger the distance, the larger the area over which the light spreads at the receiving end and the signal gets weaker if the area of the receiving anntenna (the optics) remain tge same. You would need larger and larger optics at the receiver the farther the probe is away to keep the signal strength at the same level, which at some point obviously becomes impractical.
It's exactly the same as with radio links, both rely on the same electromagnetic waves.
Then again, lasers are focused, coherent, and unidirectional, whereas radio waves are commonly omni-directional, no?
What’s the bandwidth of the radio transmission, and does that decrease with distance at the same rate?
267 Mbps at 31 million kilometers
25 Mbps at 226 million kilometers
... and with Mars being from 56 to 401 million kilometers from earth, I hope they can guarantee 10 Mbps to my living room up here, what with the extortionate prices they charge and all, mafiosos, all of them!
Weather conditions are for Earth
This tech is going to be invaluable for the future of communication in space. Sending cat videos from the comms satellite orbiting Mars to the comms satellite orbiting Ganymede will be a cinch if this can be worked out. It'll just take time, as the authors of The Expanse demonstrated brilliantly.