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Ships passing in the night used Morse code sent with lanterns and shutters to communicate. That same basic principle has allowed NASA to communicate with Psyche, its mission to a metal-rich asteroid in the main belt. However, the \u201clight\u201d was a version of heat, and instead of being able to see each other, Psyche is 240 million miles away from Earth. Oh, and the upload rate of the data it sent is still better than old dial-up internet connections that were prevalent not so long ago.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n This feat was part of the culmination of the first Phase of NASA\u2019s Deep Space Optical Communications experiment. Psyche is carrying a laser transceiver tuned to a specific frequency of infrared light, which can also be transmitted and received by two ground stations based in California. The infrared frequency the mission planner at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory selected is much higher than the typical radio frequency communications used for deep space missions. In this case, higher frequency also means higher data rate.<\/p>\n As part of its Phase I operations, the experiment transmitted data to and from Psyche at an astonishing 267 megabits per second when the spacecraft was as far away as Mars when the Red Planet is closest to us. That is equivalent to a typical wired broadband connection back here on Earth. But it was made in space \u2013 with lasers.<\/p>\n \n