Space exploration has just reached a significant milestone with the reception of a laser transmission sent from NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, located a record distance of 200 million kilometers from Earth. Although the signal does not come from an extraterrestrial source, but from our own technology, this achievement represents a crucial advance in space communications and opens up new possibilities for interplanetary travel.
Meera Srinivasan, project operations leader at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, explained that this transmission is a significant step for the project, demonstrating the effectiveness of laser communications combined with the spacecraft’s radio frequency communications system. .
NASA seeks to demonstrate the potential of laser communications over long interstellar distances, which could provide significantly greater bandwidth and a much faster connection than those currently available, up to 100 times faster.
Psyche managed to transmit real data collected by the spacecraft, including images of a cat named Taters, from 30 million kilometers at a maximum speed of 267 megabits per second. This communication took about a minute and a half to reach Earth, at speeds comparable to broadband Internet connections.
The Psyche mission includes a flyby of Mars in 2026 before heading towards its main destination, the asteroid 16 Psyche, which is expected to reach in 2029. This mission is expected to shed light on this celestial body, which is believed to contain enough metals precious enough to have an impact on the gold market.
