Washington DC: The US space agency has successfully set a new record by sending a laser signal over 290 million miles (460 million km). This effort by the institute has the potential to change the way we know about the solar system.
This milestone was crossed by NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications Technology Demonstration. The purpose of this program is to test the feasibility of using lasers in deep space.
Lasers are capable of transmitting up to 100 times more data than radio frequencies used today, allowing for more complex and high-definition data to be sent, but requiring the laser to be highly accurate.
In this experiment, this signal was sent by NASA to the Psyche spacecraft. This spacecraft was launched in October last year with the main objective of observing the asteroid named Psyche. But it was also to be used for NASA’s laser communications experiment in space.
This distance of 29 million miles is equal to the distance between Earth and Mars at their furthest point.
NASA hopes that this laser technology will power future human missions to Mars and missions to explore the solar system.
