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NASA’s Artemis II is using lasers to beam 4K video back from the moon
A new laser system aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft is sending sharper video and more data back to Earth
"As the Artemis II mission heads for a flyby of the moon, the Orion crew module is testing one of NASA’s most ambitious upgrades to space communications yet: a laser-based system called O2O. Short for Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System, O2O caps more than two decades of work by NASA and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory to build better high-bandwidth links for deep space. The system is designed to send data down to Earth at up to 260 megabits per second—far higher than the radio links earlier missions relied on. Scientific American spoke with some of the system’s developers about how it works."
"“Since the start of NASA, we’ve used what’s called microwave communications, frequencies in the gigahertz region usually,” says Greg Heckler, a deputy program manager for NASA’s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) Program, which funded the O2O system. The Orion crew capsule will, in fact, use this older technology as its core communications system, connecting back to NASA’s Near Space Network and Deep Space Network of giant radio antennas spread across the globe.
"NASA has spent the past two decades developing optical communications systems. By using bursts of infrared light—rather than microwaves—from a laser to encode data, these systems can move far more information than traditional systems and can often do so with a smaller and lighter device."
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Stipulating:
This is through the near vacuum of space
But
They are communicating through the atmosphere
We are now routinely building lasers that can burn tagets at 100s if not thousands of meters
Laser range finders and laser warning systems are virtually universal.
Where do we stand on shortrange Line of Sight laser systems for communicating vehicle to vehicle or UAV to UAV?
The signals protocols all seem to have been solved if they are being used to effectively communicate from the Earth to the Moon and back.
