Here are five things to know about this cutting-edge technology demonstration:
1. DSOC is the first time NASA will test how lasers could increase data transmission from deep space.
Until now, NASA has used only radio waves to communicate with missions that travel beyond the Moon. Much like fiber optics replacing old telephone lines on Earth as demand for data grows, going from radio communications to optical communications will allow increased data rates throughout the solar system, with 10 to 100 times the capacity of state-of-the-art systems currently used by spacecraft. This will better enable future human and robotic exploration missions, along with supporting higher-resolution science instruments.
Learn more about how DSOC will be used to test high-bandwidth data transmission beyond the Moon for the first time - and how it could transform deep space exploration. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
2. The tech demo involves equipment both in space and on Earth.
The DSOC flight laser transceiver is an experiment attached to
There is no dedicated infrastructure on Earth for deep space optical communications, so for the purposes of DSOC, two ground telescopes have been updated to communicate with the flight laser transceiver.
Data sent from the flight transceiver will be collected by the 200-inch (5.1-meter) Hale Telescope at
3. DSOC will encounter unique challenges.
DSOC is intended to demonstrate high-rate transmission of data of distances up to 240 million miles (390 million kilometers) - more than twice the distance between the Sun and Earth - during the first two years of Psyche's six-year journey to the asteroid belt.
The farther Psyche travels from our planet, the fainter the laser photon signal will become, making it increasingly challenging to decode the data. As an additional challenge, the photons will take longer to reach their destination, creating a lag of over 20 minutes at the tech demo's farthest distance. Because the positions of Earth and the spacecraft will be constantly changing as the photons travel, the DSOC ground and flight systems will need to compensate, pointing to where the ground receiver (at
4. Cutting-edge technologies will work together to make sure the lasers are on target and high-bandwidth data is received from deep space.
The flight laser transceiver and ground-based laser transmitter will need to point with great precision. Reaching their targets will be akin to hitting a dime from a mile away while the dime is moving. So the transceiver needs to be isolated from the spacecraft vibrations, which would otherwise nudge the laser beam off target. Initially, Psyche will aim the flight transceiver in the direction of Earth while autonomous systems on the flight transceiver assisted by the
Integrated onto the Hale Telescope is a cryogenically cooled superconducting nanowire photon-counting array receiver, developed by JPL. The instrument is equipped with high-speed electronics for recording the time of arrival of single photons so that the signal can be decoded. The DSOC team even developed new signal-processing techniques to squeeze information out of the weak laser signals that will have been transmitted over tens to hundreds of millions of miles.
This is a close-up of the downlink detector prototype that was used to develop the detector attached to DSOC's receiving ground station at
5. This is
In 2013,
DSOC is taking optical communications into deep space, paving the way for high-bandwidth communications beyond the Moon and 1,000 times farther than any optical communications test to date. If it succeeds, the technology could lead to high-data rate communications with streaming, high-definition imagery that will help support humanity's next giant leap: when NASA sends astronauts to Mars.
More About the Mission
DSOC is the latest in a series of optical communication demonstrations funded by
The Psyche mission is led by
For more information about DSOC, go to:
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/missions/dsoc
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