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NASA beams 27-second video to earth in 3.5 seconds

In what proved to be an amazing feat of accuracy, precision and blazing-fast speeds, NASA managed to beam a video message from the International Space Station (ISS) to a stationary position on earth by using lasers.

Through the use of Optical PAyload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS), the team inside the ISS beamed a ‘Hello World’ video to the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory (OCTL) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) facilities on Table Mountain in Wrightwood, California.

The broadcast of the 27-second video took only 3.5 seconds to hit its mark 418km away while the ISS was travelling at 28 163km/h. (It would have normally taken about 10 minutes to do with the traditional equipment on board.)

The transmission was so quick  that it reached a peak of 50 megabits per second. It was also the first 175-megabit communication for the OPALS.

“It’s incredible to see this magnificent beam of light arriving from our tiny payload on the space station. We look forward to experimenting with OPALS over the coming months in hopes that our findings will lead to optical communications capabilities for future deep space exploration missions,” said Matt Abrahamson, OPALS mission manager at NASA’s JPL in Pasadena, California, in a media statement.

For those that want to know the technical details of how the system manages to track its base so accurately, NASA has given an explanation:

“To achieve this extreme precision during the demonstration, OPALS locked onto a laser beacon emitted by the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory ground station at the Table Mountain Observatory and began to modulate the beam from its 2.5-watt, 1,550-nanometer laser to transmit the video. The entire transmission lasted 148 seconds.”

The ISS has played a pivotal role in testing and experimenting with space equipment, and NASA says that there is a lot more than can be done in the future.

“The International Space Station is a test bed for a host of technologies that are helping us increase our knowledge of how we operate in space and enable us to explore even farther into the solar system. Using the space station to investigate ways we can improve communication rates with spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit is another example of how the orbital complex serves as a stepping stone to human deep space exploration,” said Sam Scimemi, International Space Station division director at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

If you are interested on following the ISS as it makes it way around the globe, click here for more information.

[Source, Image – NASA]

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