New Delhi: NASA, the American space agency has revealed that Earth has received a mysterious signal from deep space. The signal that originated approximately 140 million miles away, came from NASA’s new spacecraft ‘Psyche’. In October 2023 NASA launched a space mission, sending a spacecraft towards an asteroid which was named ‘Psyche 16’ which is believed to be primarily composed of a metal, a rarity in our solar system.
According to reports, the asteroid is situated in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. This robotic explorer, named Psyche for the asteroid it is headed toward, also had a laser communications test to complete. Psyche is equipped with a Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system, which promises far quicker connections than existing techniques by enabling laser communications over great distances in space.
Despite Psyche primarily using Radio frequency communication, the optical communications technology has proven its capability. In a remarkable feat, the laser communications demo successfully transmitted engineering data from over 140 million miles away, which is 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the sun, after interfacing with Psyche’s radio frequency transmitter. The DSOC successfully interfaced with Psychie’s radio transmitter which allowed it to transmit information and engineering data directly from the spacecraft back to Earth.
The project’s operations lead, Meera Srinivasan, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, explained how they downlinked roughly ten minutes of redundant spacecraft data on April 8. While the original Psyche data was transferred to ground control via regular radio-frequency communications channels on NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN), the replicated data was transmitted via laser communications. The study aimed to evaluate if laser communications could match or surpass the performance of conventional techniques.
NASA’s optical communications demonstration has demonstrated that it can use the near-infrared downlink laser of the flight laser transceiver to send test data at a maximum rate of 267 Mbps, which is comparable to broadband internet speeds. The data transmission rate is now reduced, though, because the spaceship is considerably farther away.
The spacecraft successfully sent test data at a maximum rate of 25 Mbps during a test on April 8, exceeding the project’s objective of demonstrating that at least 1 Mbps was achievable at that distance. Psyche is reportedly stable and healthy as it makes its way towards the Psyche 16 asteroid between Mars and Jupiter.
