NASA to launch laser communications relay demonstration mission this year

According to foreign media, NASA has a mission called Laser Communications Relay Demonstration this summer, which aims to demonstrate the capabilities of laser communications technology. NASA said that as robots and humans are increasingly present in space, missions can benefit from new ways to communicate with the Earth. NASA has been using radio frequency communications to send data to space since the 1950s.

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Atmospheric laser communication is a type of wireless communication. It uses optical signals as the carrier of information transmission and transmits directly in the atmosphere. Because it is wireless communication, it can be moved to any place at will and realize mobile communication. Conceptually, the optical line of atmospheric transmission is very simple, that is, the laser beam is transmitted to the receiver by a transmitter. However, in actual atmospheric transmission, the narrow laser beam has high requirements for correct reception, so the system should also include an active alignment device. In space transmission, the laser system must have a strong ability to exclude stray light, otherwise sunlight or other irradiation light sources will sink the laser beam. In practice, a narrow pass filter needs to be added to select the received laser wavelength and block other wavelengths.

NASA says using laser communications will allow 10 to 100 times more data to be sent back to Earth than current radio frequency systems can support. Currently, it takes about nine weeks to send a complete map of Mars back to Earth using radio frequency systems. If NASA uses laser communications to send the same data, it will only take about nine days.