NASA will use laser beams to chat with future astronauts on Mars

NASA could use laser beams to communicate with astronauts on future missions to Mars, after successfully testing its Deep Space Optical Communications system.

Deep Space Optical Communications, or DSOC, is a laser-based communication system that could completely change space exploration. 

If it works as expected, the technology could be used for communication during manned missions to Mars. 

But to get to that point, DSOC has to be tested, and NASA has come up with a smart way to do that.

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New NASA communication system uses laser beams

NASA is gearing up to launch its manned missions to Mars, with the US space agency claiming it could happen within the next decade.

As you might expect, blasting folks off to land on the Red Planet requires a lot of training, with four astronauts recently agreeing to sign up for a year-long study that will see them face ‘realistic resource limitations, equipment failures, communication delays, isolation and confinement, and other stressors’.

Alongside training people, NASA is also working on new technologies like its Deep Space Optical Communications system, which uses laser beams to send information.

To test the system, the US space agency has been using its Psyche spacecraft as it travels on its 257 million-mile journey to an asteroid situated between Mars and Jupiter.

Psyche was launched in October 2023 and is expected to reach its destination, an asteroid also called Psyche, in 2028.

However, its time on the journey isn’t being wasted, as NASA has used it to test its new communications system.

DSOC was first used in November 2023, when the spacecraft sent data via its transceiver to the Hale Telescope at the Caltech Palomar Observatory in San Diego, California, from 10 million miles away. 

Then, in April, it was able to send data, including ‘digital pet photographs’, 140 million miles from the Psyche spacecraft’s communication system to Earth and back again. 

The DSOC system has ‘exceeded expectations’

In a new update, the space agency has said that DSOC has managed to ‘exceed project expectations’ and is helping to set up the ‘foundations of high-speed communications for NASA’s future human missions to Mars’.

“NASA is setting America on the path to Mars, and advancing laser communications technologies brings us one step closer to streaming high-definition video and delivering valuable data from the Martian surface faster than ever before,” acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy said.

“Technology unlocks discovery, and we are committed to testing and proving the capabilities needed to enable the Golden Age of exploration.”

Exciting stuff.

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