NASA has confirmed a significant milestone for its Psyche spacecraft's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment. This technology demonstration aims to test laser-based data links beyond the...
Psyche mission launched on October 13, 2023, with the goal of exploring the origin of planetary cores and studying the metallic asteroid known as 16 Psyche. The spacecraft is scheduled to reach the namesake asteroid in 2029.
I’m assuming it was a two-way test. Beam some data to the spacecraft, then have the spacecraft beam the data back to Earth.
What spacecraft?
Just read the article.
It’s definitely not 140m miles away after just a year.
Actually, it is! Space motion isn’t straightforward. Here’s another article that has a diagram indicating the relative positions.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-optical-comms-demo-transmits-data-over-140-million-miles
Oh wow thanks! I did not have the perspective for the distance. I figured that was Voyager 1 kind of numbers.
Voyager 1 is in the neighborhood of 15b miles from earth!
Hot damn