NASA’s Psyche spacecraft It launched this morning at 10:20 a.m. ET and is now headed toward its namesake, the metal-rich asteroid. The long-delayed mission will use an array of scientific instruments to examine the asteroid and determine whether the rocky chunk was the core of a baby planet that never fully formed.
But Psyche’s mission does not end there. The spacecraft also carries out important experiments. It will test future laser technology for sending and receiving large amounts of data to and from distant spacecraft, called the Deep Space Optical Communications Project (DSOC). It is expected to deliver significantly improved data rates with 10 to 100 times the capacity of wireless communications. Currently, radio is the only option for sending and receiving signals in space, but it cannot meet the growing data needs of long-range spacecraft. DSOC could be a game-changer for the next generation of missions, allowing future rovers to send back high-resolution images and Martian astronauts to send videos back home.
“We’re trying to prove that we can achieve very high data rates from as far away as Mars. This will enable the use of higher-resolution scientific instruments, such as mapping Mars. And… “There’s a lot of interest in manned Mars exploration because it requires high bandwidth,” says Abhi Biswas, DSOC project engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The DSOC near-infrared laser transceiver is housed in a tubular sunshade that protrudes from one side of the Psyche spacecraft. The instrument is designed to transmit high-speed data with a 4-watt laser and receive low-speed data from Earth with a photon-counting camera, both through an 8.6-inch aperture telescope.
Engineers will begin testing the system about 20 days after launch, but this is just a technology demonstration. Psyche’s mission data will be relayed through conventional radio communications. DSOC will send and receive laser signals about once a week during the first two years of the spacecraft’s six-year journey to the asteroid, while engineers test transmitters and detectors. .
Similar technology has previously been used on European Space Agency satellites in geostationary orbit and on NASA’s lunar orbiters. But at a distance of 200 or 300 million miles, this will be the first time such an attempt has been made at a location much farther than the Moon.
