Photo: NASA
Imagine having to hit a target that's only three feet across (one meter) from eight American football fields ways using just a laser beam. That's roughly what NASA says it achieved with two pieces of technology called TBIRD and LCOT.
TBIRD is something you may be familiar with. The term is an acronym for TeraByte InfraRed Delivery, and it was placed in orbit by a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in the spring of 2022. Its main mission was to test laser communications technologies that could be applied in space exploration in the future.
The hardware, which is the size of a tissue box, was installed in a spacecraft named Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator-3 (PTD-3) and it has officially ended its mission. That's because the satellite that carries it, lacking a propulsion system of its own, has been constantly pulled toward our planet, to a point that is now unusable. But that doesn't mean experiments don't continue to deliver impressive results.
Like the one we're here to talk about now, which also involved the aforementioned LCOT as well. That's short for Low-Cost Optical Terminal, and it describes a ground laser station located at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, that was built with nothing more than commercial hardware, modified to some extent to suit NASA's needs.
The LCOT was recently used to transmit a laser comms uplink to the TBIRD, the first time something like this had been attempted. The laser beam emitted by the hardware not only managed to find its target in orbit, but was also able to deliver enough intensity for the TBIRD to catch the beam, recognize it for what it is, connect to it, and maintain the said connection.
The uplink was live, we're told, for over three minutes, and was quite the achievement given how it required “one milliradian of pointing accuracy." Moreover, the duration of the connection is what it would take to deliver over five terabytes of data, which is about as much as 2,500 hours of high-definition video.
NASA is presently pushing hard to make laser communications in space norm. As it stands, most of today's missions rely on radio frequency systems, which are reliable, but not necessarily very fast and high-quality.
Lasers, on the other hand, would not only be faster, but would also permit the sending and receiving of high-definition videos and photos and troves of science data. What the LCOT-TBIRD test has shown is that these transmissions should allow humans to keep in touch with spacecraft as they venture deeper and deeper into space.
One of the main reasons for such research is the potential of crewed missions to Mars, and laser comms are seen as the "critical lifeline" for the astronauts going there. The Artemis Moon exploration program will however benefit from it as well.
Testing the LCOT will continue even without the TBIRD. NASA plans to use the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) satellite that's been in space since 2021 for the task. Additionally, other related project in this field are ongoing.
The hardware, which is the size of a tissue box, was installed in a spacecraft named Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator-3 (PTD-3) and it has officially ended its mission. That's because the satellite that carries it, lacking a propulsion system of its own, has been constantly pulled toward our planet, to a point that is now unusable. But that doesn't mean experiments don't continue to deliver impressive results.
Like the one we're here to talk about now, which also involved the aforementioned LCOT as well. That's short for Low-Cost Optical Terminal, and it describes a ground laser station located at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, that was built with nothing more than commercial hardware, modified to some extent to suit NASA's needs.
The LCOT was recently used to transmit a laser comms uplink to the TBIRD, the first time something like this had been attempted. The laser beam emitted by the hardware not only managed to find its target in orbit, but was also able to deliver enough intensity for the TBIRD to catch the beam, recognize it for what it is, connect to it, and maintain the said connection.
The uplink was live, we're told, for over three minutes, and was quite the achievement given how it required “one milliradian of pointing accuracy." Moreover, the duration of the connection is what it would take to deliver over five terabytes of data, which is about as much as 2,500 hours of high-definition video.
NASA is presently pushing hard to make laser communications in space norm. As it stands, most of today's missions rely on radio frequency systems, which are reliable, but not necessarily very fast and high-quality.
Lasers, on the other hand, would not only be faster, but would also permit the sending and receiving of high-definition videos and photos and troves of science data. What the LCOT-TBIRD test has shown is that these transmissions should allow humans to keep in touch with spacecraft as they venture deeper and deeper into space.
One of the main reasons for such research is the potential of crewed missions to Mars, and laser comms are seen as the "critical lifeline" for the astronauts going there. The Artemis Moon exploration program will however benefit from it as well.
Testing the LCOT will continue even without the TBIRD. NASA plans to use the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) satellite that's been in space since 2021 for the task. Additionally, other related project in this field are ongoing.
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