On April 30th, utilizing the new Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) system, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) achieved an unprecedented communication transmission across a cosmic distance of 225 million kilometers (140 million miles).
The DSOC system is part of the Psyche probe, launched on October 5, 2023, en route to the eponymous asteroid between Mars and Jupiter, aiming to experiment with extraterrestrial metal mining. The current status is reported to be excellent.
As a subsidiary experiment, DSOC marks humanity's first attempt at high-frequency bandwidth communication beyond the Earth-Moon system using near-infrared laser technology.
On December 11th last year, the DSOC system completed its first test, which was over 30.5 million kilometers (19 million miles) away, about 80 times the distance between Earth and the Moon.
In just 15 seconds, NASA successfully transmitted a 4K video to it. The video featured a cat named Taters chasing a laser pointer dot. The transmission speed reached up to 267Mbps at its fastest and as slow as 25Mbps.
On April 8th, DSOC completed another communication transmission over 225 million kilometers away, which is 1.5 times the distance between Earth and the Sun.
The specific speed of this test was not disclosed, but it was known to be a two-way transmission. First, Earth sent data to DSOC, and then DSOC sent the data back to Earth, covering a round trip distance of over 450 million kilometers!
