“Our hybrid antenna has been able to successfully and reliably lock onto and track the #DSOC downlink since shortly after the tech demo launched,” said Amy Smith, #DSN deputy manager at JPL. “It also received #Psyche's radio frequency signal, so we have demonstrated synchronous radio and optical frequency deep space communications for the first time.”
(The article has an image of the actual antenna, which is not the one appearing here)
Psyche – from Greek mythology to Greek mountain tops
ESA will participate in NASA's Deep Space Optical Communication (DSOC) demonstration in 2025.
To select a suitable site for ESA’s ground infrastructure, the team searched for the most suitable optical telescopes in Europe; the 2.3 m Aristarchos telescope, located at an altitude of 2340 m at the Helmos Observatory in Greece, checked all the necessary boxes.
#NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications experiment beamed an ultra-high definition streaming video on Dec. 11 from a record-setting 19 million miles away (31 million kilometers, or about 80 times the Earth-Moon distance).
The video signal took 101 seconds to reach Earth, and was sent at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267Mbps.
Although still far from its 2029 encounter with the asteroid, the spacecraft opened its eyes (twin cameras) and captured a total of 68 images, all within a star field in the constellation Pisces.
The spacecraft has already set a record by using a laser beam to communicate with Earth in an experiment called Deep Space Optical Communications (#DSOC).
NASA’s pioneering Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment will be the first demonstration of laser, or optical, communications from as far away as Mars.
• 20 days after launch: DSOC calibration and commissioning phase is expected to begin, preparing the tech demo for operation.
• 50 days after launch: First expected contact opportunity between DSOC ground systems and the flight transceiver aboard Psyche.
• June 2024: First phase of this technology demonstration ends.
• January 2025: Second phase of the tech demo begins.
• October 2025: DSOC tech demo ends.
The Deep Space Optical Communications experiment will launch aboard the Psyche spacecraft, NASA’s first mission to the metal-rich asteroid Psyche. The experiment will test high-bandwidth optical communications to Earth during the first two years of the spacecraft’s journey to the main asteroid belt.
#NASA will host a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EDT on Wednesday, Sept. 20
#NASA 📆 July 12, 2023 #DSS23 started in 📆 February 2021 at the Goldstone, #California, #DSN Complex (with #OpticalCommunication
capabilities, which will be critical to communicate with #astronauts 👨🚀👩🚀 traveling to #Mars 🔴). NASA cannot use #RadioFrequency communications to carry higher data rates like those required for Mars without increasing
the size of its antennas 📡 or power of its radio transmitters. Therefore, the Agency is developing #optical communications (use
of light as a means of transmitting information through #lasers) https://oig.nasa.gov/docs/IG-23-016.pdf
#NASA's #Psyche mission will talk to Earth using a transceiver with "a never-before-flown photon-counting camera attached to a 22cm aperture telescope [...]. The transceiver will autonomously scan for, and “lock” onto, the high-power near-infrared laser uplink transmitted by the Optical Communication Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California. The laser uplink will also demonstrate sending commands to the [s/c]."