REAL LIFE NEWS: LASERS WILL OFFER BROADBAND IN SPACE
by Hazed
NASA is going to use lasers to send data to and from the International Space Station, providing the astronauts with gigabit-per-second rates with what will be “the high-speed internet of the sky.”
The plan is to encode digital data packets into light beams fired between Earth and the ISS. The first step will be to send the equipment needed to make this work up to the space station, including a switching unit to route data in and out of the terminals on board, so that the laser-encoded communications can be received and beamed back to the planet.
Data will be exchanged with bases in California and Hawaii, and the technology should sustain data rates 10 to 100 times faster than the radio links used today. The system won’t just be faster, it’ll also be a lot less bulky than the radio hardware, and use less power – good things with equipment that has to be hoisted into orbit.
The new space internet connection’s faster uplink and downlink rates will make it easier for the astronauts to communicate with Earth, which is important for morale, particularly on long-range missions to other planets such as Mars. It also means scientists can get the results of tests faster from probes sent to various parts of the Solar System.
The system is called the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) and it is currently being developed and tested, so that the prototype hardware can be launched into orbit in the summer of 2019, followed by another laser terminal sent to the ISS two years after that.
“We plan to fly this new terminal in 2021, and once tested, we hope that many other Earth-orbiting NASA missions will also fly copies of it to relay their data through LCRD to the ground,” said NASA’s Don Cornwell.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/23/nasa_laser_internet/
