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One year ago today, the future of space communications arrived at Earth as a beam of light from a NASA spacecraft nearly 10 million miles away. That\u2019s 40 times farther than our Moon. That\u2019s like using a laser pointer to track a moving dime from a mile away. That\u2019s pretty precise.<\/p>\n
That laser \u2014 transmitted from NASA\u2019s DSOC (Deep Space Optical Communications) technology demonstration \u2014 has continued to hit its target on Earth from record-breaking distances.<\/p>\n
\u201cNASA\u2019s Deep Space Optical Communications features many novel technologies that are needed to precisely point and track the uplink beacon and direct the downlink laser,\u201d said Bill Klipstein, DSOC project manager at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.<\/p>\n
One of the technologies aiding that extremely precise pointing was invented by a small business and fostered by NASA for more than a decade.<\/p>\n
Part of the challenge with the precision pointing needed for DSOC was isolating the laser from the spacecraft\u2019s vibrations, which would nudge the beam off target. Fortunately for NASA, Controlled Dynamics Inc. (CDI), in Huntington Beach, California, offered a solution to this problem.<\/p>\n
The company had a platform designed to isolate orbiting experiments from vibrations caused by their host spacecraft, other payloads, crew movements, or even their own equipment. Just as the shocks on a car provide a smoother ride, the struts and actuators on CDI\u2019s vibration isolation platform created a stable setting for delicate equipment.<\/p>\n
This idea needed to be developed and tested first to prove successful.<\/p>\n
NASA\u2019s Space Technology Mission Directorate started supporting the platform\u2019s development in 2012 under its Game Changing Development program with follow-on support from the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) program. The technology really began to take off \u2014 pun intended \u2014 under NASA\u2019s Flight Opportunities program. Managed out of NASA\u2019s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, Flight Opportunities rapidly demonstrates promising technologies aboard suborbital\u00a0rockets and other vehicles flown by commercial companies.<\/p>\n
Early flight tests in 2013 sufficiently demonstrated the platform\u2019s performance, earning CDI\u2019s technology a spot on the International Space Station in 2016. But the flight testing didn\u2019t end there. A rapid series of flights with Blue Origin, UP Aerospace, and Virgin Galactic put the platform through its paces, including numerous boosts and thruster firings, pyrotechnic shocks, and the forces of reentry and landing.<\/p>\n
\u201cFlight Opportunities was instrumental in our development,\u201d said Dr. Scott Green, CDI\u2019s co-founder and the platform\u2019s principal investigator. \u201cWith five separate flight campaigns in just eight months, those tests allowed us to build up flight maturity and readiness so we could transition to deep space.\u201d<\/p>\n
The culmination of NASA\u2019s investments in CDI\u2019s vibration isolation platform was through its Technology Demonstration Missions program, which along with NASA\u2019s SCaN (Space Communications and Navigation) program supported NASA\u2019s Deep Space Optical Communications.<\/p>\n
On Oct. 13, 2023, DSOC launched aboard the Psyche spacecraft, a mission managed by JPL. The CDI isolation platform provided DSOC with the active stabilization and precision pointing needed to successfully transmit a high-definition video of Taters the cat and other sample data from record-breaking distances in deep space.<\/p>\n
\u201cActive stabilization of the flight laser transceiver is required to help the project succeed in its goal to downlink high bandwidth data from millions of miles,\u201d said Klipstein. \u201cTo do this, we need to measure our pointing and avoid bumping into the spacecraft while we are floating. The CDI struts gave us that capability.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Psyche spacecraft is expected to reach its namesake metal-rich asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter by August 2029. In the meantime, the DSOC project team is celebrating recognition as one of TIME\u2019s Inventions of 2024 and expects the experiment to continue adding to its long list of goals met and exceeded in its first year.<\/p>\n