The spacecraft arrived in orbit around the Moon this October

Nov 2, 2013 08:44 GMT  ·  By
An artist's impression of LADEE beaming laser data back to Earth at impressive speeds
   An artist's impression of LADEE beaming laser data back to Earth at impressive speeds

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft recently broadcast an incredibly fast data burst to a ground station on Earth, marking the second time laser signals are used over great distances to transmit large volumes of information. The laser light traveled 400,000 kilometers (249,000 miles) from the Moon to our planet. 

The laser beam was broadcast from LADEE to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Optical Ground Station, located in the Tenerife, the Canary Islands. The speed at which the data arrived was several orders of magnitude above that possible with conventional radio waves.

This transmission marks an important breakthrough in space communication technologies, and paves the way for even more advanced data laser system on future missions to the Moon and beyond.

The lunar orbiter communicates with the OGS using highly-focused beams, which are picked up by the station's new, advanced laser terminal. The instrument was developed by a team of European experts from Denmark and Switzerland.

LADEE launched into space on September 7, and achieved orbital insertion around the Moon at 10:57 UTC, on October 6. The mission was developed by NASA scientists from the Ames Research Center (ARC) and Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Its purpose is to study the lunar exosphere.

“We acquired the first signals from LADEE on 26 October, and since then, we’ve had a series of optical uplinks and downlinks providing extremely fast laser communications,” explains the ESA project manager for the laser communication system, Zoran Sodnik.

“We’ve already received data at up to 40 Mbit/s – several times faster than a typical home broadband connection,” he adds. The first time LADEE used lasers to communicate with Earth was on October 18, when the beam was focused on NASA's White Sands facility, in New Mexico. The third station capable of picking up the signal is at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in California.

Laser communication is better than traditional methods for a variety of reasons. Its speed is its main advantage, but laser units are also smaller and lighter than conventional radio systems. LADEE features a near-infrared laser as a technology demonstrator.

By reducing the amount of space the communications payload takes up, future mission developers will be able to fit more scientific instruments, or more complex devices, than ever before on the available satellite buses.