Once this period ends, in August 2029, the US space agency plans to begin a 26-month flight plan to carry out various tasks, such as the characterization of the asteroid, topography, the study of its gravity and elemental mapping. .
Psyche is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and is possibly the core of a planet that lost its outer crust due to collisions with other bodies. Approximately 300 kilometers in diameter, it is believed to be composed mainly of nickel and iron. Exploring this asteroid could provide crucial information about the origin of our solar system and Earth itself.
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NASA managed to establish optical communication via laser with the Psyche mission.
NASA is innovating the way it communicates with space
To collect all this data, NASA is innovating the way it communicates with space. With the “Deep Space Optical Communications System”, it has managed to establish optical communication via laser with the Psyche mission at a distance of 226 million kilometers, equivalent to one and a half times the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
This achievement marks the first contact of the ‘Deep Space Optical Communications System’ with the communication system of the Psyche spacecraft, transmitting engineering data to Earth. This milestone offers a vision of how future spacecraft could use this technology, enabling faster communications and the transmission of complex scientific information.
In this demonstration, laser communications technology has been designed to transmit data from deep space at speeds faster than state-of-the-art radio frequency systems. The mission has managed to send test data at a maximum speed of 267 megabits per second from the flight laser transceiver’s near-infrared downlink laser, a speed comparable to broadband Internet download speeds. Additionally, it can transmit test data at a maximum speed of 25 Mbps.
Furthermore, the project team has directed the transceiver to optically transmit data generated by Psyche. While it sent data through its radio frequency channel to NASA’s Deep Space Network, the optical communications system simultaneously transmitted a portion of that data to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory (San Diego, California, United States). ).
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NASA is innovating in the way it communicates with space.
What is NASA’s Psyche mission spacecraft like?
The Psyche mission spacecraft has dimensions comparable to those of a small van, with a height similar to that of a regulation basketball hoop, and incorporates solar panels that cover an area equivalent to that of a tennis court.
Regarding the scientific instruments it integrates, Psyche has a gamma ray and neutron spectrometer, a multispectral imager, a magnetometer, an X-band radio telecommunications system and the laser communication tool ‘Optical Communication in Deep Space’ .
In addition, to move and orbit around the homonymous asteroid, Psyche uses low-thrust solar electric propulsion. This technique combines photoelectric cells with electric thrusters to move the craft through space, allowing for efficient and precise travel to its target.
