NASA has relied on radio waves in the past to send information to and from space.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has achieved a new milestone in space communication by streaming 4K video footage from an aircraft to the International Space Station (ISS) and back using laser technology. According to NASA's blog, the feat was conducted by a team at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. It marked the first time that such a high-definition video was transmitted using optical communications - a method that could revolutionise data transmission for future space missions.
The team at the US space agency carried out the experiment as part of a series of tests on new technology. The scientists hope that this technology could provide live video coverage of astronauts on the Moon during the Artemis missions.
"These experiments are a tremendous accomplishment," said Dr Daniel Raible, principal investigator for the HDTN project at Glenn. "We can now build upon the success of streaming 4K HD videos to and from the space station to provide future capabilities, like HD videoconferencing, for our Artemis astronauts, which will be important for crew health and activity coordination," he added.
Notably, NASA has relied on radio waves in the past to send information to and from space. However, laser communications use infrared light, capable of transmitting 10 to 100 times more data at much faster speeds than traditional radio frequency systems.
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To achieve the latest milestone, NASA's Small Business Innovation Research program collaborated with the Air Force Research Laboratory. According to the blog, Glenn engineers temporarily installed a portable laser terminal on the belly of a Pilatus PC-12 aircraft. They then flew over Lake Erie sending data from the aircraft to an optical ground station in Cleveland. From there, it was sent over an Earth-based network to NASA's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where scientists used infrared light signals to send the data.
The signals travelled 22,000 miles away from Earth to NASA's Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), an orbiting experimental platform. The LCRD then relayed the signals to the ILLUMA-T (Integrated LCRD LEO User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) payload mounted on the orbiting laboratory, which then sent data back to Earth. During the experiments, High-Rate Delay Tolerant Networking (HDTN), a new system developed at Glenn, helped the signal penetrate cloud coverage more effectively, the space agency explained.
The ongoing tests aim to refine these technologies further, researchers said. This initiative is part of NASA's broader goal to stream high-bandwidth video and other data from deep space, enhancing the capabilities for human missions beyond low Earth orbit.
"Teams at Glenn ensure new ideas are not stuck in a lab, but actually flown in the relevant environment to ensure this technology can be matured to improve the lives of all of us," said James Demers, chief of aircraft operations at Glenn.