The device will send a video back to Earth via laser light

Apr 14, 2014 08:06 GMT  ·  By

Scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, will soon conduct the first ever optical communications experiment from aboard the International Space Station (ISS). The Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) instrument will take off to the space lab later today, April 14, aboard a private resupply spacecraft. 

Hawthorne, California-based Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (SpaceX) will launch its third resupply flight to the ISS today, from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) in Florida. The mission will be carried out by the unmanned Dragon space capsule, which will be delivered to Earth's orbit by a Falcon 9 medium-lift delivery system.

OPALS is just one of the many experiments to be flown into space by the SpaceX CRS-3 mission. Its main goal is to send video data back to Earth via laser light, a capability that has never been tested from aboard the ISS before. On October 13, 2013, NASA successfully demonstrated the capabilities of a pulsed laser system called the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD), which was installed on its Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft.

Existing radio frequency (RF) transmission devices have done an excellent job relaying data back to Earth thus far, but the latest generations of scientific instruments on spacecraft and probes produce too many pieces of data for these systems to handle in a timely manner. NASA has been interested in high data rate transmission technologies for quite some time now.

Both OPALS and LLCD are technology demonstrators meant to highlight the performances and challenges associated with using lasers for information transmission in space. Engineering data collected by these experiments will help NASA create laser-based communication devices for upcoming missions to explore the solar system.

“Optical communications has the potential to be a game-changer. Right now, many of our deep space missions communicate at 200 to 400 kilobits per second,” explains JPL investigator and OPALS mission manager Matt Abrahamson. The new experiment is expected to relay data to Earth at a rate of up to 50 megabits per second.

In the future, NASA hopes to develop deep-space optical communication technologies that will enable a spacecraft to send on a gigabyte of data per second from the orbit of Mars. “It's like upgrading from dial-up to DSL,” OPALS systems engineer Bogdan Oaida explains.

“Our ability to generate data has greatly outpaced our ability to downlink it. Imagine trying to download a movie at home over dial-up. It's essentially the same problem in space, whether we're talking about low-Earth orbit or deep space,” he concludes.