Knowing the infinite space that surrounds the Earth has led humanity to create ingenious technologies, from large telescopes, satellites, probes and even an International Space Station in which astronauts live.
In order to improve communications between the Earth’s surface and astronauts in outer space, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA, has successfully developed an innovative technological communication method that will be used in the future. close in the new space missions.
What is NASA’s innovative communication method?
It is the new ‘End-to-end bi-directional laser relay system‘, the first of its kind, which managed to successfully send multimedia content to outer space and back via laser communications links at a speed of 1.2 gigabits per second, something that is extremely cool, since, it is faster than the internet currently available in homes.
The test of this system was somewhat fun, since a total of 500 images and videos were used, which contained pets loved by the astronauts, and included dogs, cats, cows, roosters, rabbits, pigs, birds, snakes, among others. animals.
All of this information was transmitted back and forth between Earth and the International Space Station (ISS), by astronauts Randy Bresnik, Christina Koch, Kjell Lindgren and other NASA employees.
This great space feat allowed NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) program to be tested, showing the great potential of laser communications and at the same time testing a new networking technique.
What was the NASA broadcast like?
NASA’s transmission began on a computer located at a mission operations center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, which sent information to optical ground stations located in California and Hawaii.
At the stations, the data were converted to an infrared light laser signal and sent to NASA’s LCRD (Laser Communications Relay Demonstration) satellite, located 35 thousand kilometers above Earth, and then redirected to the ILLUMA-T instrument, which is aboard the ISS.
In addition to this innovative communication system, NASA scientists also developed an alternative protocol of ‘Delay/Interruption Tolerant Networks (DTN)’ and the creation of High Speed Delay Tolerant Networks (HDTN), which allows data forwarded as they are received or stored for future transmission if signals are interrupted in space, at a speed four times faster than the DTN currently used in space communications.
This is a great method of space communication, which will possibly replace radio frequency transmissions, since it is capable of transmitting more scientific data in less time, having a narrower wavelength, which will surely be very useful in future missions. NASA scientific and exploration activities, such as the Artemis mission, which plans to establish a sustainable presence on the Moon.
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