Who sent her? NASA received a coded message from a distance of 226 million kilometers from Earth

• Breakthrough in space communication, NASA reports
• Psyche sent a message from the depths of space

A special apparatus on board the Psyche probe, which is flying to study a rare asteroid, has successfully sent another message to scientists. This time from a record distance of 226 million kilometers from Earth. It’s a breakthrough that could change the way spacecraft communicate, scientists say.

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NASA reports a major breakthrough

The probe of the American agency NASA is to land on the planet between Mars and Jupiter in five years. Scientists believe that asteroid 16 Psyche is rich in rare metals such as iron, nickel and gold. While the satellite travels through space, scientists are successfully testing the Deep Space Network’s laser device. However, during the latest demonstration, the encrypted message was transmitted by the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system.

The test on April 8 showed that even from this distance data can be downloaded at a maximum speed of 25 Mb/s. This already greatly exceeds the expected target of at least 1 Mb/s, writes the IFLScience server. In previous tests, the probe was much closer, only tens of millions of kilometers away. She sent a coded image and even a video of a cat named Taters from deep space.

The performance of both instruments on the Psyche probe is showing promise, but there are still several issues that need to be resolved. For example, optical communication is complicated by clouds. “We’ve learned a lot about how far the system can work if we have clear skies, although storms have occasionally disrupted communications at both the Table Mountain observatory and Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in California,” said JPL’s Ryan Rogalin.

“This is one of many important milestones that pave the way for communications capable of sending high-resolution images and streaming video to support the next great leap in human history: sending humans to Mars,” said Trudy Kortes, director of the Technology Demonstration Division at NASA Headquarters. .

The Psyche probe flies to investigate an extraordinary asteroid

The latest successful demonstration is certainly an important milestone, but that doesn’t mean NASA researchers don’t have much to think about. The farther the probe gets from Earth—and therefore closer to asteroid 16 Psyche—the more difficult it will be to aim the two devices so that the message can be read by a large telescope. In addition, as the distance increases, it will be necessary to reset both the satellite itself and the ground observatory during data transmission.

NASA uses radio waves to communicate with missions farther than the Moon, but the advantage of laser beams is that much more data can be packed into much tighter waves—we’re talking 10 to 100 times faster than current state-of-the-art radio communication systems.

Preview photo credit: Chalmers University of Technology, credit: IFLScience, NASA/JPL, NASA