NASA Receives Laser Message From Psyche Spacecraft 140 Million Mil

JAKARTA - NASA has just received a laser message from a distance of 140 million miles. However, before you get carried away with wishful thinking about the existence of aliens, there is a simple explanation behind it.

The laser signal was sent to Earth by NASA's Psyche spacecraft, which is currently 140 million miles from Earth - 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. According to NASA, this impressive achievement could pave the way for future missions to Mars.

"This achievement provides a glimpse into how spacecraft can use future optical communications, enabling data communication with higher levels for complex scientific information as well as high-definition images and videos in favor of humanity's next major leap: sending humans to Mars," NASA explained.

The laser message was sent to Earth by NASA's Deep Space Space Optical Communication transceiver, which is currently installed on the Psyche spacecraft. The transceiver sends and receives data through an 8.6-inch aperture telescope.

"We delivered about 10 minutes of spacecraft data duplicated during the track on April 8," saidten Srinivasan, lead project operations at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "Until then, we have submitted our test and diagnostic data in our downlink from Psyche.."

"This is an important milestone for this project by showing how optical communication can interact with the spacecraft's radio frequency communication system," Srinivasan added.

The experiment first started in December 2023, when Psyche was only 19 million miles from Earth. During that initial test run, test data was sent at a speed of 267 megabits per second - comparable to broadband internet download speed.

Now, when the spacecraft is more than seven times further away, the speed that can be used to send and receive data is reduced. During the latest test, the spacecraft transmitted data at a speed of 25 megabits per second.

While this may sound low, NASA says it goes far beyond the project's goal of proving that at least one megabit per second allows at that distance.

Previously, NASA only used radio waves to communicate with space missions.

"Just like fiber optics replacing the old telephone line on Earth with growing data demand, switching from radio communication to optical communication will allow data enhancement across the solar system, with a capacity of 10 to 100 times the latest systems used by spacecraft," NASA explained.

"This will further enable future human and robotic exploration missions, as well as support scientific instruments with higher resolutions," NASA said.