Laser Mission Reveals Bright Future for Space Communications (Video)

It turns out that there's a bright future for space communication. Scientists have completed a 30-day Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) mission and have found that the possibility of expanding broadband capabilities in space using laser communications is not only possible, but likely.

The LLCD was designed to confirm that laser communication capabilities were possible from a distance of almost a quarter-of-a-million miles. The mission itself was hosted aboard the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE). In addition to demonstrating record-breaking data download and upload speeds to the moon at 622 megabits per second (Mbps) and 20 Mbps, respectively, LLCD also showed that it could operate as well as any NASA radio system.

In fact, LLCD demonstrated error-free communications during broad daylight, including operating when the moon was to within three degrees of the sun as seen from Earth. The mission also demonstrated error-free communications when the moon was low on the horizon, less than four degrees, as seen from the ground station. This demonstrated that wind and atmospheric turbulence did not significantly impact the system.

"We were able to download LADEE's entire stored science and spacecraft data [1 gigabyte] in less than five minutes, which was only limited to our 40 Mbps connection to that data within LADEE," said Don Cornwell, one of the researchers, in a news release.

That's not all, though. Using LADEE's onboard radio system would take several days to complete a download of the same data. Additionally, LLCD was to prove the integrity of laser technology to send not only error-free data but also uncorrupted commands and telemetry or monitoring messages to and from the spacecraft over the laser link.

The mission reveals that there's a bright future for communications in space. It could advance both space communication and even may have Earth applications.

Want to learn more? Check out the video below, courtesy of YouTube.