what kind of download speeds can you expect on the International Space
Station what about on Mars well as you can imagine it's not great NASA
communicates with its Rovers on Mars and all of its deep space probes using the
NASA deep space Network or DSN which
unfortunately has some pretty serious limitations due to being both based on
radio waves and established in 1963
we'll see if you're still spry when you turn 60 to overcome these challenges
NASA's jet propulsion laboratory is working on a new system called Deep
Space Optical Communications or Doo
which is a laser system that might just be a GameChanger for interplanetary
communication and yes they've already used it to send a cat video before we
get into that though let's talk about the old system that Doo needs to be
better than in many ways the DSN is a scientific and Engineering Marvel it
uses three antenna arrays in California
Spain and Australia in order to ensure coverage of the entire sky and each
array is located in a bull-shaped mountainous area to Shield it from as
much radio interference as possible the DSN uses a small subset of relatively
highfrequency radio waves that can easily Escape Earth's atmosphere rather
than bouncing off the ionosphere and coming right back which can happen with
lowf frequency radio waves like those used for AM radio radio waves being a
form of electromagnetic radiation move at the speed of light so using lasers
wouldn't really speed up communication in the strictly literal sense they would
however massively increase efficiency and bandwidth the longer an
electromagnetic wavelength is the less information it can carry every second
unfortunately radio waves are the longest of the electromagnetic spectrum
and thus have the lowest carrying capacity the lasers that deso will use
are in the near infrared region making them comparably tiny and therefore
allowing a much higher bandwidth this means that an important communication
from a nearby Planet like Mars would take basically the same amount of time
to physically reach Earth between 3 and 22 minutes depending on where the two
planets are in their orbits but 10 to 100 times more information could be sent
every second a data package that would otherwise take days or months could
instead be downloaded in a matter of hours the hardware necessary to
communicate via lasers is also lighter and more compact act than comparable
Radio Systems meaning that it's easier to fit onto a relatively small probe or
Rover without excessively increasing the fuel needed to escape Earth's gravity
well you know another problem with radio waves is that they tend to spread as
they're transmitted that's not a problem when you want them to go everywhere like
with a television broadcast but it means that the signal quickly becomes very
weak once it travels any significant distance from its original source and
unfortunately almost everything in space is very very far away with lasers you
still need to account for Signal interference and Distortion over long
distances but a coherent beam of energy is going to maintain its strength for
longer think of it like the difference between a shotgun blast and a shot from
a sniper rifle the energy is more focused and it goes much farther but
infrared lasers do have physical limitations that radio waves don't they
require far more precise aim and much like visible light they can't travel
through opaque objects that's not a major problem though seeing as space is
mostly empty so when exactly will we be sending those cat videos and what kinds
of speeds can we expect within our own solar system we'll tell you right after
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might be able to send and receive laser Transmissions feline or otherwise from
as far as our solar systems inner asteroid belt as soon as 2029 that's
because we've actually been developing the technology needed to catch Mars
telecommunications up to the 21st century for several decades scientists
made their first major breakthrough with extraterrestrial laser Communications in
1968 when they proved that the surveyor 7 moonlander could detect lasers
originating on Earth in 1995 the Japanese space agency was able to
establish two-way laser communication with its ETF s 6 satellite at an
astounding 1 megabit pers second by 2001
we had achieved laser communication between satellites and by 2013 NASA used
lasers to send an image of the Mona Lisa to a satellite orbiting the moon the
technology has progressed to the point where we can easily transmit data
between Earth and low earth orbit at not just megabits but even many gigabits per
second on October 13th 2023 NASA
launched the psyche Mission a spacecraft Bound for the asteroid 16 psyche which
sits in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that mission will also be an
important test for the technology behind dck as the psyche spacecraft will encode
its data and send it back to Earth using infrared lasers the psyche Mission won't
arrive at its destination until 2029 but it's already made one successful test of
the new communication system on December 11th 2023 from over 19 Million Miles
Away the spacecraft sent back an ultra highdefinition video of an orange cat
reportedly named Tater playing with the dot of a laser pointer the hope is that
psyche's dock will be able to send data back at 2 megabits per second even after
it reaches its destination far beyond Mars demonstrating the viability of
laser communication even in the farthest reaches of the solar system well the
inner solar system for now but we're coming for you Neptune hey that was a
techwick thanks for watching like follow And subscribe if you feel like it and
check out our other videos like this one on the world's longest wireless internet
range there may be lasers involved I I haven't seen it I don't know