In a first, Nasa has used laser communication technology to send 4K video streams from an aircraft to the International Space Station (ISS) and back, a feat that is part of a series of tests on a new technology that could provide live video coverage of astronauts on the Moon during the US’s Artemis missions.
Historically, Nasa has relied on radio waves to send information to and from space.Laser communications use infrared light to transmit 10 to 100 times more data faster than radio frequency systems.
Working with the Air Force Research Laboratory and Nasa’s small business innovation research program, engineers of Nasa’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland 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 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.
“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 video-conferencing, for our Artemis astronauts, which will be important for crew health and activity coordination.”
The flights were part of an agency initiative to stream high-bandwidth video and other data from deep space, enabling future human missions beyond low Earth orbit. As Nasa continues to develop advanced science instruments to capture high-definition data on the Moon and beyond, the agency’s space communications and navigation program embraces laser communications to send large amounts of information back to Earth.
Historically, Nasa has relied on radio waves to send information to and from space.Laser communications use infrared light to transmit 10 to 100 times more data faster than radio frequency systems.
Working with the Air Force Research Laboratory and Nasa’s small business innovation research program, engineers of Nasa’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland 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 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.
“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 video-conferencing, for our Artemis astronauts, which will be important for crew health and activity coordination.”
The flights were part of an agency initiative to stream high-bandwidth video and other data from deep space, enabling future human missions beyond low Earth orbit. As Nasa continues to develop advanced science instruments to capture high-definition data on the Moon and beyond, the agency’s space communications and navigation program embraces laser communications to send large amounts of information back to Earth.