What’s The Mystery Behind Recent Laser Transmission Strikes On Earth From 140 Million Miles Away?

Pic: Nasa

New Delhi: Earth recently picked up a signal from deep space approximately 140 million miles away, equivalent to going to moon 40 times, American space agency NASA revealed.

However, there is nothing to worry about as it originated from NASA’s new spacecraft, Psyche, tasked to send information back to Earth on its voyage through space.

The Psyche 16 is equipped with Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system which aims to make laser communication possible across vast distances in space. In October 2023, NASA sent it towards an asteroid, named ‘Psyche 16,  believed to be primarily composed of metal and located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Psyche would provide “a glimpse into how spacecraft could use optical communications in the future, enabling higher-data-rater communications of complex scientific information as well as high-definition imagery and video in support of humanity’s next giant leap – sending humans to Mars,” NASA wrote in its website.

The laser communications demo successfully transmitted engineering data from over 140 million miles away, which is 1.5 times the distance between earth and sun, after interfacing with Psyche’s radio frequency transmitter. The DSOC also successfully interfaced with Psyche’s radio transmitter, allowing it to transmit information and engineering data directly from the spacecraft back to earth.

“We downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft data during a pass on April 8,” the project lead on Psyche at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in South California Meera Srinivasan told Daily Mail.

“This duplicated data was transmitted via laser communications, while the original Psyche data was sent to ground control using standard radio-frequency communications channels on NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). The objective was to assess if laser communications could perform as effectively, if not better, than traditional methods,” she added.