These Future NASA Missions Will Make Radio Obsolete
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- Опубликовано: 25 авг 2024
- NASA's successor to the Deep Space Network, infrared lasers and LCRD.
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Image Credits: NASA
Music Credit: Eternal Traveler - Adrian Chifu
The timing of your releasing this video is funny for me, because I'm just wrapping up a research project on this very topic (deep space optical communication) that I had the chance to work on as part of an internship at Bell Labs. (I'm a Ph.D. student.)
The work that folks at NASA did on this topic is pretty incredible. Communicating with a spacecraft that's as far away as Jupiter or Saturn using lasers is quite challenging, and unsurprisingly, it turns out to have very different challenges compared to terrestrial fiber optical communication (which also works using infrared lasers, btw). NASA and others have made key technological breakthroughs over the past decade or two to make this possible; I've read scientific papers on this topic that date back all the way to early 2000s (when I was in kindergarten haha), so I'm really excited that we're now so close to testing these systems in deep space missions!
Thanks for covering this exciting topic! Love your videos.
Yeah, that's great news and all there guy but they've known about this form of communication for decades now but didn't introduce it first because they gotta milk that cow first. This is nothing new under the sun, in fact, I'm sure somewhere in NASA'S mission statement is a confession about spoon-feeding the public as they drool over each "new" piece of technology they introduce while maintaining a steady diet of fossil fuels instead of utilizing the antigravity tech the military already has. But I'm sure you already knew that being that you managed to squeeze through the bottleneck process of obtaining entry into their little club.
Would this work at very very long distances? 14.5 billion miles? which is the distance of the voyager1 to earth? Does it work without a clear line of sight? lets say there are planets/asteroid belt/moons between the sender and receiver will it still work? it might be better for short distances but I doubt this will replace radio if the answer to the above questions are no.. look forward to your reply
Exciting work, Sai. All the best with your research.
@ Sai ALL the way back to 2000 you kids still make me laugh when you say that.
Very cool to hear you use the Murican' length unit of "standard king size mattress" 🤣 great content as always thank you
🤣🤣😅
It's not *really* a Ksm. It was standardized to 1274 fluid-burgers in 1997, but they kept the name.
@@fnamelname9077 i honestly wasn't sure if KSM was being used as length or volume here
@@seionne85 Haha yeah I assumed rough volume.
Imagine if a probe missed an orbit, and in the control room you suddenly have an engineer go "Wait, mattres *volume* or *length*?"
Heehee!
@@fnamelname9077 I just want to know if a KSM mass in space is based on spring or air (err, gaseous filled).
Lol you earned my like and subscription a LOOOONG time ago brother. This is my favorite YT channel. And this just might be my favorite video on RUclips! Thank you for taking the time to make it
Heading for 1 million subs too!
This comment finally made me subscribe. I've always watched his videos but never came around to subbing🤷
Same
Agree
Facts
I am surprised a technology as such was not introduced earlier. Thanks for covering this topic!
because its super hard!
This is not new, satellites already use it for two decades. Look at the ESA satellite Artemis.
@@adamabele785 It’s much easier to do this between satellites than to Earth, as Earth’s clouds block the lasers used for communications to probes, but do not block radio waves.
Anything with government is decades later than it should be.
The first space-to-ground laser communication was in 1994, by Japan's space agency. Since then, it's gone from strength-to-strength. Particularly in recent years there's ongoing work to create networks around Earth, the moon, and deep space. The potential has been seen for many, many decades.. The European Space Agency ESA was toying with the idea, commissioning a report on the topic as far back as 1977! Wireless optical communications in general predates radio and even lasers - starting with the Photophone, invented by Alexander Graham Bell and his assistant in the year 1880.
6:30 small point of correction: a geostationary orbit means the orbit has the same period as the Earth's rotation, the same _rate_ but not the same _speed._ Spacecraft in synchronous orbits move much faster through space than the Earth's surface rotates in absolute terms
Yeah, the object in geostationary has a larger distance to cover compared to earth and so has to have a higher speed to keep up
Same *Angular* speed
@@karanaway I was just gonna post this.
There is also a major difference between geostationary and geosynchronous orbits. Geosynchronous orbits have an orbital period identical to the Earth's rotational period, but geostationary orbits are a further specialization that describes a circular orbit in the same plane as the Earth's rotation - the object does not move relative to the ground.
Splitting hairs a bit
I personally think if this new tech proves a significant improvement to data and communication to rovers and other science vehicles, that it become a widespread. It could also assist in communication between earth and the moon. We could really start setting up robots to start building structures. We could build structures with human operators. Now I don’t think it would be supper fine tuned but we could set the foundation for long term habitation. Or something along those lines.
I don't get the interest in Earth's moon. There are tons of problems with setting up permanent structures on Mars, especially if they're manned, but the moon presents an even greater challenge with fewer solutions.
The moon doesn't really have resources that aren't fairly easily found on Earth. Even if it did, transport would be incredibly expensive, so it's doubtful it would be viable.
Why on earth would you want to live on the moon
@@ossiehalvorson7702 the advantage of a moon colony is that the lack of an atmosphere and reduced gravity make it the perfect launch site for deep space missions. If we were capable of manufacturing rockets and fuel on the moon, we could launch way heavier payloads to outer space than it is possible now.
@@TheMarc477 it would be such an otherworldly experience
@@ezequielciamparella1653 That's true, but last I was aware we still have no idea if we could actually get a reasonable amount of the materials necessary for that.
I work on these projects and I'm glad to see them getting attention on your channel. Just a couple of notes:
- LCRD's transmitters/receivers all face Earth for relaying ground-to-ground or ground-to-orbit data, so LCRD is not a solution for returning high rate data from deep space.
- Comparing the size of the LCRD spacecraft to the ground antenna isn't really relevant, but rather the ground station telescope is ~1m compared to the 34 m DSN antennas (the 70m wouldn't be used, and you could argue that none of the DSN antennas would be necessary for a GEO target). DSOC will be the first demonstration of this technology from deep space, and it will use the ~5m Palomar telescope.
- Finally, the reason we get higher data rates with higher frequency electromagnetic waves isn't that the higher frequency waves carry more information, it's that IR light has lower divergence than radio waves, so the energy density of the received signal is much higher (but as some commenters pointed out this makes it more difficult to point the signal to the ground station).
Thanks again for the coverage!
Wouldn't ultraviolet light be more efficient than infrared at transmitting large payloads of data, owing to a smaller wavelength?
Thank you for the clarification. If LCRD is not a solution for transmitting signals from deep space to earth, what's the next gen solution to send data back from deep space explorations including Artemis?
Hello Astrum I am Nived I am 13
And I am watching you since 2019 and I am wanted to be an astronaut and I am observing space since 2013 and your videos are big help to me your videos provide me new info
So as observer for now because I am child I respect you
As always, phenomenal work Alex. Anytime you post a video it's a highlight of my day 🙂
Well presented and told for us all to understand as always . Thank you.
he basically read from nasas website
5:50 ow! my eye!
😆
Flying stations look too cool! Although space exploration is still too expensive, it is worth it, at least not only in terms of exploration, but also in terms of material extraction. You can find out what materials we're talking about on my channel, where we talk about everything related to space, planets and space stations, telescopes, and the like.
LIKE!
Love you, Hubble! Can you like me? :)
Fine =)
I love your channel, Alex. Keep up the great work!
Another fascinating presentation. Astrum just keeps getting better and better. The graphics are stunning. One additional point: the search for extraterrestrial intelligence community is also beginning to look at optical communication as a communication link - would be worth an Astrum episode itself.
Awesome channel with awesome content and great quality as always 💖❤️♥️🌍💯🤗
This is such a wonderful channel. Thank you Alex, for all the work you put in to it.
I work for an ISP and do adsl to fiber upgrades frequently. Now NASA is getting on board. Super!
I remember stepping up from a 300 baud modem to a 2400 baud. Knocked my socks off at the time.
I had a friend who said that he’d click on a web page, and go get a cup of coffee while it loaded!
I'm actually surprised that this is just now happening, I really thought they already had this up and running. It would make sense to use radio waves to relay data between orbit and earth, then use laser for deep space... I imagined this more than a decade ago, glad to see it's finally on its way, it's about time!
Maybe apply for a job at NASA? They could probably use someone with such intuition and vision... they’d be a decade further forward!
@@DanSmithBK nah... despite the fact I'm too old, they are wrapped up in too much bureaucracy... Musk has it in the private sector... Maybe they'll take some hints from him...
This tech is harder to implement than you realize. Trying to keep a laser emitter and receiver aligned over great distances is really hard. That is why they are only now starting to implement it.
@@SSanatobaJR it's hard, I admit, but the technology to implement it has been around for decades, after all, landing rovers on Mars is difficult too. Surely with all the top notch scientists working for NASA, it could have been accomplished long ago. I'm sure they have their reasons... Better late than never I suppose.
Solution: StarLink IPM (Inter Planetary Mission). A low number (to start with) of cube sats that are deployed around Mars, Moon and "Other objects of interest", with 3-5 "Mother Satellites" like LCRD, to communicate with Earth. So science crafts sends to closest cube, then relies to a "LCRD" that relies back to Earth, or a "LCRD" closer to Earth. Then we can place modular "LCRDs" in different Lagrange Points in space, to have a truly Deep Space Network. In Space.
Modular, so we can send robot missions with upgrades and repairs, so it can ha a life span of 30-50 years.
This is happening wayyyyyy sooner than I imagined it would. Hopefully this is a huge success and we can get a more permanent satellite launched down the line.
First off, I could watch your videos all day! Thank you for making them. Could you consider doing a video on the center of mass between the earth and moon? Trying to understand the effects the moon has on the earth more.
One issue with this tech that I haven't seen discussed: Doppler shift of the signal. Radio signals have longer wavelengths, making it more adaptable to differences in speed between transmitter and receiver. We had problems with Doppler shifts with the Cassini Huygens mission, and that was using radio signals. It would be much worse with optical systems when the shift variance covers many times length of the waveform.
With some modulation schemes such as on-off keying, I don't think it would have any effect the system at all how quickly those 1's and zeros arrive, except an imperceptible change in data rate. With modulation schemes where timing is important (such as Pulse Position Modulation), may need to get some timing information and then add a little correction into the software algorithm.
@@spacedude5257 If memory serves QAM can actively deal with frequency offsets to keep the constellation in place, but those courses where a long time ago so
These days, optical transmitters and receivers can be tunable over a wide frequency range, and they can also be mixed together to produce sum and difference frequencies just as microwaves can be. We're not limited to the specific wavelengths associated with electron state jumps, as simple lasers are.
Finally a new video. Thank you, it made my evening 💙
Maybe They could use traditional methods to communicate with satellites in low earth orbits, so they wouldn't need to worry about cloud cover, then those satellites could translate the data into laser and send it longer distances, and vice versa...
I have to wonder if that's the real point. Obviously we have faster comm satellites than the deep space system already.
That thought crossed my mind; have relays in orbit to avoid any cloud cover.
We actually had laser comms a long time ago and never seriously used them because of their serious drawbacks. Like CLOUDS. This "interplanetary" system is opaque to clouds!
The radio band's fully utilized. There's no wide band for space probes to go in. That's why optical is being ressurected.
How is one of our probes in deep space supposed to connect with our geosynchronous laser receiver? Doesn't it require perfect line of sight from across the solar system?? The laser beam has to be perfectly aimed from pluto to earth?
@@stevencoardvenice That's true for radio as well as laser at least. Presumably there'd be a network of them, like there are for radio.
@@SimonWoodburyForget
Fascinating
@@stevencoardvenice Except where the Earth (or the Sun, or the Moon) eclipses a given spacecraft's position, it CAN be pointed in any direction as it orbits the Earth. Furthermore, multiple satellites can be used to guarantee a free path.
@@stevencoardvenice No and yes. The gain of an antenna, whether microwave or optical, is limited by its aperture and wavelength, according to the Rayleigh criterion, and this is where optical communications really shines (so to speak), since the wavelengths are so much smaller. But the angular width of the laser beam is still finite, for any practical instrument. So if a spacecraft traveling near Neptune has an antenna beam width of just a small fraction of a degree, it will easily cover the whole Earth-Moon system, even when pointed as precisely as possible.
BUT, for closer links, like to a spacecraft orbiting Mars, this WOULD be a consideration, and the spacecraft when transmitting would have to aim at where the satellite it is targeting will be when the beam gets there, and when receiving, where the satellite was when IT transmitted. So for a two-way link, it may be more practical to use separate antennas (or telescopes, if you prefer when talking about optical communications) for transmitting and receiving.
This is really a solved problem, since combining a satellite's orbit with that of the body it orbits (and the body THAT body orbits) to get a position in an inertial frame of reference has been an issue since the early days of space flight. It's just that this hasn't been a problem with the much larger wavelengths used with microwave communications.
I have shares in Australian company EOS. They have an optical communications system called spacelink. Obviously I'll be delighted when optical comms takes off. They also have a remarkable debris detection and tracking system. Spacelink has software to remove the "noise" caused by atmospherics, increasing the bandwidth and transmission rates. There is also satellite to satellite comms, overcoming the dead spots caused by cloud cover. Exciting times.
This issue with cloud cover: how does Starlink work? (13Mbps) If it is different, why not use both systems. Lasers to go across space, and on clear days, to Earth, and whatever satellite internet uses to beam down to Earth when cloudy.
Starlink only does sat-to-sat laser comms because it's harder to do space-to-ground. (EDIT: They use radio comms for space-to-ground - not too hard), only laser space-to-ground is hard) The satellites are in low Earth orbit, not geosynchronous, so it would have to be constantly switching ground stations. There's also the issue that lasers also fan out less than radio waves - typically a feature rather than a bug - but that does make it harder for each satellite to serve hundreds of different customers at once. Solving all these issues would dramatically increase mass, cost and complexity, whereas SpaceX is always trying to make their products as simple and low-cost as possible.
@@jeffbenton6183 wym startink hasn’t deployed sat to sat yet??
@@Freshbott2 I didn't say that
@@jeffbenton6183 Thank you for your reply.
@@jamescaldwell2357 NP
I love checking out the DSN website to see what dishes are communicating with which space crafts at the time.
Later this year, hopefully you'll see the lasercom connections to the Psyche asteroid probe. Exciting stuff!
Your videos are extremely compelling and informative.
Thank you for all your work and dedication. Astrum video are always guaranteed to be extremely interesting to watch, unlike the average here on RUclips...
A CD disk player rotated at 250 rpm when the pickup is on the edge of the disk, and at 500 rpm when the pickup is close to the centre of the disk. This method is called CAV or Constant Angular Velocity, in order to maintain the same data throughput. Same as the satellite which has an higher speed as it goes into an higher orbit: it has more distance to cover in the same time. At a 36,000 km orbit, the satellite appears to be stationary with respect to any point on Earth.
I believe the the visual explanation of the geostationary orbit is totally correct, and the difference in wording is purely semantic and not a mistake on part of Alex.
My 2 pennies...
LCRD is not the first optical communications demonstration mission: The concept was first tested in outer space aboard the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) orbiter in 2013. LADEE's Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) pulsed laser system conducted a successful test on 18 October 2013, transmitting data between the spacecraft and its ground station on Earth at a distance of 385,000 km (239,000 mi). This test set a downlink record of 622 megabits per second from spacecraft to ground.
I hope the old radio telescopes will be preserved for future generations as a museum and stuff.
I watch and rewatch your videos before bed, I find your voice so soothing and each video is so incredibly interesting.
Thanks for all your videos man they are really well done and consistently engaging
I used to not like this channel, because you sounded like you were always smiling. Now i know, and smile with you :)
Love this content, thank you!! Super profesional quality!!!
Great video as always Alex. Just one thing I noticed with alot of your videos lately, can you maybe tune down the background music a bit? The volume makes it a bit irritating.
Solution :-Optical data to earth orbit then transfer to radio wave to solve penetrating cloud.
Also next telescope that goes beyond human help needs a maintenance drone on board.
I love your voice and style. Noticed a bunch of issues in the couple of videos where I had some expertise. I hope you continue researching the topics and proofing your script. Looking forward to future content
I thought the older title was catchy enough, but didn't get a chance to watch the video yesterday. I still appreciate Astrum's content nonetheless though ♥️
You taught me something new: The bits about geostationary. For distance spacecraft, geostationary satellites like LCRD could be like Earth's WiFi router xD
Small correction: Psyche is currently slated to launch on a Falcon Heavy somewhere this august, not in 2026 :)
One potential to the Fermi Paradox is that Seti has been looking for transmissions in bandwidths no advanced civilizations use anymore because they've all upgraded to much more efficient and less noisy interplanetary communication systems.
Or maybe they've already heard our radio noise and are ghosting us because "Ugh I don't want to deal with those annoying Earthlings right now..."
"Oh, look. Isn't that cute? They're using MICROWAVES!"
But those huge radio dishes look so cool.
Must need to be a good aim for laser receiver!! Or maybe the laser is split ever so slightly so a larger area of earth is in effective receiving/communication zone.
They would presumably make two types, one like a spot light, direct and intense on a specified area and the other like a floodlight not as intense but covering a wider area?
The laser would be space relay to vehicle and relay to relay. From there we could transfer to a broadband radio transmission or use laser to multiple locations around the world and then use fiber to get from ground station to relay.
Its basically what we're doing on earth aready but with no dirt to dig in space and better optical property's with vacuum in space then glass in cabeling
If you think of the optical part of the communication system as what it IS, a telescope, you will realize that we can already point telescopes pretty well, based on knowledge of the positions of many reference stars.
We were always told never to aim lazers at aircraft overhead; and Now NASA goes and does just that.
aren't radio waves just another wavelength of light? and all wavelengths of light travel at the speed of light, no?
yes, but why do you ask? If you are concerned about data rates then 2 different wavelength do not need to have the same communication rate/speed.
Yes, both travel at the same speed. There's a limit to how many bits of data you can pack into a single 'wave' . More waves per second (higher frequency)=more bits per second.
If you look at SpaceX's upcoming Polaris missions, they are looking to test laser communication between Crewed Dragon and Starlink. If NASA were smart, they would hook into Starlink for their deep space laser communication system as well as hook in Earth orbiting spacecraft such as the ISS. Starlink can provide uninterrupted communication to anywhere on Earth at any time and at high bandwidths. This way the NASA network can have basically unlimited bandwidth.
Something important missed is a problem with deep space communication is radio waves spread out a fair amount over long distances. This causes the signal to get a lot weaker. Laser communication can be made to be a lot more confined. There is a diffraction limit defining how much you can focus this energy.
If you look at NASA missions, as the technology they have available has been advancing, NASA missions have been going way up in the amount of data collected. They used to talk about gigabytes back when that was a lot and pushing the bounds of technology and lots of patience to get the data back to process and then handling the data with slow tape drives because that was all that was big enough to store gigabytes of data back then. Then it moved into terabytes in more recent years and hard drives. Now some missions are pushing into the petabyte range, just not so much the deep space stuff because it is still too slow for petabyte transfers. But put lasers into the mix and the deep space network can catch up to the Earth orbiting satellites in terms of finally being able to transmit petabytes around. Computing capability has also gone way up. NASA relies heavily on doing fast fourier transformations. CPUs do this well with hyperthreading turned off as in the overhead of hyperthreading just slows things down. Throw in accelerators and you can do a lot more than what CPUs alone can do. Throw in cloud computing and Docker containers and such and you can just order up a bunch of Docker container instances in the cloud and process through a large data set really fast. So the compute capability is there. The instrument data collecting capability is there. Just need the laser link to compete out the picture for high end science to be done on these missions so the science teams can really see in detail what is going on in unprecedented detail and in short order. No longer are you waiting months, years, or even decades to get the data in order to do the science associated with these missions, granted you have this laser link in place to complete out the picture.
I doubt that StarLink’s optical links would be suitable for directly communicating with deep space missions. The NASA ground station optical links for deep space involve a 1 meter optical aperture on the transmit side and 5 meters on the receiving side. Even the deep space probes will use a 22 cm optical aperture. I doubt that the StarLink optical links involve apertures nearly large enough to participate in communications with deep space probes. Sure, StarLink could help communicating with ISS, but that’s not the primary purpose of these new deep space optical links.
@@zzubra Starlink is for the hop between LEO, the ground, and other orbiting communications satellites. It's the middle man. The problem has always been getting through the atmosphere and to a specific point on the ground reliably. This is where Starlink shines. In other words, the signal goes from ground to Starlink to orbiting NASA communications satellite and then off to somewhere else. This way the NASA communications satellites have round the clock access to anywhere on Earth regardless of where they are in orbit, just as long as they are close enough to talk to Starlink.
@@ChaJ67 Sure, there are potential applications of StarLink to supporting near-Earth communications. But, personally, I’m interested in deep-space communications. For that, relay satellites are likely to be irrelevant unless satellites are built that have apertures and power levels comparable to those used in ground stations. In the absence of that, communications with deep space probes will be directly between those probes and ground stations.
@@zzubra That's interesting information that I didn't know. But it's obvious now that I think about it, that they would use a larger aperture for receiving than for transmitting, since adding power to a transmitter is cheaper than increasing its aperture, while you can't improve the receiver noise floor beyond a certain point.
There is an additional downside to this form of communication besides just cloud cover. The spacecraft sending the laser signal must always keep its emitter perfectly aligned with the receiver on the other end. Any little movement would break the connection, while radio communication is not as sensitive to movement, even with directional dishes and arrays. And the further the signal sender spacecraft is from the receiver, the harder it is to keep aligned for any real length of time. This is why this kind of communication has not been used in deep space before. Even with our current technology, it would likely be extremely hard to keep a laser perfectly aligned with such a receiver if it was on the Voyager spacecraft. Or a spacecraft in orbit of Neptune. And absolutely impossible right now if the receiver were around another star. We still have a ways to go on this tech yet.
Yeah, that's why there's likely going to be radio antennas on those missions for when it can't transmit with lasers.
It's not *any* amount of motion that would break the link - due to divergence of the laser light the wavefront does expand as it propagates through space, but you're correct that it's the most critical challenge in a deep space application.
Where the highest bitrates matter most it on any home leg relay, where receiver size is also less of a problem. Ship to ship can use mid/far IR without a worry for the atmosphere, and with heat noise posing less of a problem than for Astronomy.
I agree. Relay stations in the solar system would help.
Your comment is misinformed throughout. Most systems are kept aligned via a coarse pointing gimbal in combination with a fast steering mirror. Some systems actually require no moving parts, using a laser array and lenses. NASA actually licenses such patents for commercial use. Further more, the technology is already here. The first space-to-ground laser communication system was carried out in 1994 by Japan's space agency JAXA. Now, megaconstellations are being built using optical intersatellite links.
There are many, many ways to overcome cloud cover, including Disruption Tolerant Networking protocol, spacecraft as nodes, nodes to circumnavigate the cloud, transportable optical ground stations to go to where the clouds aren't, Managed Optical Communications Array to connect to multiple receivers, aircraft as nodes, converting to longer wavelengths for the last section of downlink, using data buffers, using larger receiver telescopes, using adaptive optics on the receiver, or simply increasing the transmission power!
When you say ". And the further the signal sender spacecraft is from the receiver, the harder it is to keep aligned for any real length of time. " this is practically false because precision is measured in microradians, and beams diverge. By the time the beam gets from space to ground, it's at least 15 metres diameter. By the time a laser gets from Mars to Earth, the spot is as wide as an entire country.
First! Love your videos man, ive been watching for almost 5 years now! Its really opened up my love for astronomy and gave me motivation to explore the universe!
284th 😁
@@rjung_ch 1,628th!
My first thought is-
You would not need an optical uplink and downlink to the Earth and could still operate at full (or near full) during cloud cover and not be limited to ground station locations that experience minimal cloud cover most of the time as shown in the video.
That short hop could still be done to the surface using Microwave RF at Gigabit speeds while using optical as proposed for the obvious other functionality.
Just wondering the maximum distance over which this technology can be used to communicate?
It depends on how far they have come in developing tech to keep a laser emitter and a receiver aligned over great distances. My guess right now is they could only use it as far as Mars orbit or Venus orbit without too much trouble and without a lot of relays. But I could be wrong.
However, in time, I bet it could be used to communicate much farther. Still only at the speed of light though.
I like this channel a lot, I usually listen to the videos to relax, but I have to say, I usually skip videos that start with the anxious suspended chord build-up like this one. I mean, I still watch and enjoy them. I just wish they started like the other ones. The intro music I like the most is the one on the video about Titan (Our Solar System's Moons).
Man, if we could have even 1080p videos from Mars’s surface, that would be insane.
You still can't exceed the speed of light. We will never have real time communication within the solar system.
@@SimonWoodburyForget It's solving latency as well, in 3 cases:
(1) Lasercom and optical intersatellite links in particular is enabling Low Earth Orbit and Medium Earth Orbit megaconstellations. This is far less distance than the old geostationary comms satellites, and so lower latency.
(2) Compared with conventional comms satellites, the future with optical intersatellite links and Managed Optical Communications Arrays means a mesh of satellites to choose from all in approximately the same orbit, so your signal can be routed along the shortest path.
(3) Light travels slow in fiber optics (0.7c), and so LEO satcom is lower latency. The effect is particularly noticeable at long distances, 3000km and more.
7:30 So put an optical receiver above the clouds to receive laser signals from space, which retransmits through the clouds to earth ground stations with radio.
Cool. I’ve always wondered when NASA would start looking at optical comms
Advancements in technology really helps in improving our communication with the satellites
At the heart of NASA is Dr. Evil and his giant "laser".
Video is very important to make the general public appreciate and support robotic missions.
I can't help it.
This is a really bright idea!
(runs away now)
I love that phrase: "Beyond the Moon."
I always commend people who make an effort to pronounce the name of Jezero crater correctly. Kudos, Alex! (I think I already commented in this vein on another of your excellent videos.)
Very excited to see where this goes!
Oh man I am so excited!
Esa has its own Deep Space Network: ESTRACK
Ye, we can't wait more; and now we are gonna experience something that was unimaginable before !
I guess I need a bit more info. Radio transmissions can be sent in a general direction and even though weakened over great distances can still be recieved. Lasers transmit on a very tight waveform versus an expanding waveform like radio frequency. This to me, would mean absolute accuracy over these vast distances ,between the transmission and reception point. I don't believe they can be that accurate with their " aim". If not , does this laser transmission just miss the reciever and head off on it's own course or what? Seems to me a more powerful radio transmitter might be just as easy and more reliable. Enjoy watching these videos because it makes me ask questions.
I haven't finished video yet, but I know that laser beams do expand a little bit, so there would be some leeway.
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 Agreed but, we're still talking about the speed of light. It would take a laser beam 125 years to get there and 125 years to get back. And we would have traveled for 250 years to another point in the universe. It just brings to many questions to my feeble mind.
@@FishnChips136 wait, what's 125 light-years away? Psyche is going just between Mars and Jupiter. That's less than a light-hour.
I think for much longer distances we'd need relays every few-zillion miles to recoeve and rebrodcast...
@@jengleheimerschmitt7941 That's always been my question. They tell us it's 125 light years to the nearest galaxy or 4.5 light years to the next nearest Star. I just don't understand how they calculate intergalactic distances. We don't have the technology available.
@@FishnChips136 Parallax.
Can’t believe I didn’t hear anything about that new launch, but it does sound pretty exciting
It was a rideshare with a classified US Space Force payload. It also wasn't the first space-to-Earth laser comms demonstration. All that said, I think the space enthusiast community should have been geeking out about it more (I, for one, watched the launch very closely).
I'm sure radio will still be kept around for as a backup or other stuff for communication and such along side laser which will be tight beam communication while obviously won't be as widely used I'm sure it still having radio or other stuff of many antennas are still important
Keep up the good work!👽
Great video! The psyche mission launches this august by the way!
2 points:
1. I was waiting/wanting to talk about this idea, i didnt know it was actually in motion
2. As someone who lives here, its nice to hear Hawaii get in on some space action
Hawaii is always in our hearts and minds since it hosts some of the biggest and most important telescopes in the world. :)
If I recall correctly, the Voyagers were able to transmit quickly with radio. They did not bog down. Perhaps newer craft are using undersized, underpowered antennas compared to the Voyagers.
Love ur videos but in this one there is an “alarm sound” in the background (probably the music or something) that prevented me to finish the video…maybe I’m just crazy XD
I knew this was going to be a video about optical transmission as soon as I saw the title. I feel like NASA should use a satelite that combines the benefits of a laser for long range communication, and an auxiliary 5G communication system as a backup for the events of bad weather, similar to what starlink wants to do.
Better yet, NASA could work out a deal with SpaceX to have their satelite communicate with starlink system, and put multiple of those in orbit around earth. This should completely adress any concerns regarding down time due to both earth blocking the line of sight of the satelite and weather on earth.
The radio wave can still be used to read senarios, in deep space or optical light flow cannot stay in course path. But is only renders in bianary of 1 dimensional.
The part of LCRD roll advantage, is with a far broad spand & oartially faster optic, so REAL time can become almost that live, remote spectating on anither pkanet in. a bot body to an earth app or comp.
That ad at the end had me rolling.
This is super exiting! I can’t wait to see Artemis now! :)
Looking forward to more discoveries.
Excellent video fantastic contents enjoyed thanks
Surprised you didn't mention SpaceX Starlink using laser coms in their network. Cool stuff.
Hey, regarding your How Did Mars Die video, you said that ions were negative because they lost an electron, then corrected it on the comments. What you didn't mention, which I think helped you make the mistake, is that ions can be positive (cations) or negative (anions) depending on whether they lost electrons or protons. I think you may have mixed the word ions with the word anions since they are very close. Hope I helped in some way.
I was really really hoping this was a video about quantum entanglement
Finally, astronauts will be able to download pirated movies at a decent speed.
They should have used an intermediary satellite in close earth orbit that uses both radio and laser communication and to provide even better coverage for said remote satellite.
The DSN was used for all of the Apollo program, not just the couple of situations mentioned. 🤔
Awesome!
Thank you love light and blessings x
See the movie "The Dish" about the role of the Parkes radiotelescope during the Armstrong first walk.
Over half the video just to finally say one type of Electromagnetic Communication (Radio) is being 'replaced' by another form of Electromagnetic Communication (Laser). Two points of interest: Light is just a higher frequency RF. And Laser comms are hard to aim, require expensive equipment (atmospheric interference compensation), and have a lower average lifetime (due to complexity - more pieces, more chance of failure). It will supplement the 'lower' RF bands, it will not replace it.
Fascinating. Great video
You skipped over TDRSS. I thought that was THE in between step.
But glittering prizes and endless compromises shatter the illusion of integrity!
Why the Earth to geostat laser link? Use laser for the long space distances, but link to Earth with radio to get it through clouds. Since it's just going a relatively short distance, the radio equipment can be small.
Let me just mention that ESA also has a similar system under deployment, and ISRO plans one. Also, SpaceX plans to use optical links for spacecraft to spacecraft communication within their Starlink constellation.
Who knows what we missed in the universe around the earth without a forth entena
LCRD doesn't spell-out a cutesy word like all NASA's other missions. Time to go back to the blackboard.
We just need a really long Ethernet cord.
We must get an update on this!
Saying NASA allows ESA to use the deep space agency is kinda weird when they literally own and operate one of them haha
Lol this America we own and control everything whether you like it or not
@@foxxrider250r i think your america superiority complex is clouding you brain
@@1draigon and grammar.