US laser beams send back high-definition video from space or change space communications

According to Xinhua News agency, Washington, June 6 (reporter Lin Xiaochun) is the broadband era of space coming? NASA announced 6th that it had successfully completed a technical demonstration that could radically alter future space communications by using a laser beam to transmit a high-definition video from the International Space Station to the ground. This communication test is called laser Communication Science optical load (opals). According to the NASA release, in the 5th technical demonstration, a length of 37 seconds, called Hello, the world! High-definition video, only 3.5 seconds to successfully return, the equivalent of the transmission rate of 50 megabytes per second, and traditional technology downloads require at least 10 minutes. According to NASA, Opals uses very small laser beams to transmit data at speeds 10 times to 1000 times times faster than the existing radio-based communication methods. This is like upgrading from dial-up to broadband Internet access. Pogdan Waid, an engineer in charge of the project, said. One of the big challenges of the experiment is the extremely precise locking of the earth station at Wright Wood, California's small town. NASA said that because the space station is 400 kilometers from the ground, running at an hour high, this task seems to be 9 meters away, in the walk always with laser pointer aimed at the end of a hair. In a technical demonstration on 5th, the ground station first aimed at the space station to send a laser cursor, which was then locked by the Opals system on the space station, and then began to transmit the video, the entire test for 148 seconds. Opals project manager Matt Abrahamsen said in a statement that we look forward to continuing the Opals test in the next few months, hoping that our work will bring optical communication capabilities to future deep space exploration missions.