NASA could one day use lasers for live streams from the moon

Thanks to laser technology, it may be possible to receive live feeds from astronauts in space on future Artemis moon missions. NASA is testing a method of space communication that uses a laser beam instead of radio waves to transmit data and video to guide ground control to Earth with astronauts on the moon.

The bar has been set high for some time now. NASA Teams have made tremendous progress in laser communications since an experiment conducted in December 2023. After years of working on the technology, during this test, a video of Taters the cat was sent to Earth via a laser communications streaming service from a distance of 30 million kilometers.

The next round of experiments began in early June and involved the connection NASA’s Pilatus PC-12 Aircraft back to the instruments at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland via laser link. In early July, the team sent a 4K video on a round trip to International Space Station (ISS) from an airplane. And on July 30, Space.com witnessed the conclusion of another experiment in the series, as the aircraft conducted another test run of what is known as the High-Rate Delay Tolerant Networking (HDTN) system.

“HDTN has actually broken several world records and achieved several firsts for Space in general and in the United States,” Rachel Dudukovich, lead engineer for HDTN at NASA Glenn, told Space.com. “We have demonstrated secure file transfer from the ISS, which is the first Time that’s never been demonstrated before. We demonstrated over 900 megabits per second over the laser communications link from the ISS, which is also the first time that’s ever been demonstrated in space.”

Related: NASA sends a video of a cute cat to Earth from 30 million kilometers away via laser (Video)

a small white airplane on a concrete slab.

The aircraft used for the laser communications demonstration. (Image credit: Space.com / Meredith Garofolo)

How does it work? In principle, this type of networking has the potential to create a solar system-wide internet that is reliable, secure, and capable of automated data transfer at high data rates. In the recent demonstration, Space.com was able to watch the aircraft take off; shortly after, it began communicating with a team of scientists on the ground using laser beams.

“We address environmental challenges, such as long delays and weather-related disruptions. The protocols we use are specifically designed to meet these needs,” said Dudukovich. “We store data when the connection is lost, and when it is restored, we resume data transmission. Essentially, it is a high-rate buffering function.”

In addition to live streaming and sending video and data, this technology will also create a sort of space-wide network, allowing teams in space to stay better connected to Earth than ever before.

“We have protocols and standards that make a space network work like the internet that we all enjoy with our connectivity. If we bring those two things together, we can start to provide services to spacecraft,” Daniel Raible, an electronics engineer and principal investigator at NASA Glenn, told Space.com. “Services could be things like sending commands and controls, receiving telemetry from vehicles, and also on our human spaceflight missions, sending text messages and emails back and forth and video conferencing.”

In the past, NASA missions used radio waves to transmit information both into space and back to Earth. The difference between using laser or optical communications and radio waves is that researchers and scientists use infrared light instead, which allows for greater bandwidth and more data to be transmitted from spacecraft to Earth over the laser link. This also allows for more services to be available despite large differences in time and distance due to what scientists call the “store and forward” protocol.

“The Internet – which is big and spans the globe – allows us to still be connected within a fraction of a second. Once you’re on the moon, there’s no second of time lag, and once you’re on the moon, Marsthere’s a time delay of four to 20 minutes, depending on where we are. The software takes care of all the delays and dropouts that are common in spacecraft communications,” Raible said. “When the rocket experiences dropouts, maybe because a cloud blocks the view for a period of time or a wing falls over the laser, it’s similar with solar outages. The software buffers all that data and when a connection is available again, it starts sending it out.”

The successful test run on Tuesday is only part of the bigger picture.

“We collect as much data as we can while the configuration is set up, and then (the researchers) go back to the lab and figure out what they really got out of the program. They can even sit in the hangar and send data back and forth,” Mark Russell, a research pilot at NASA Glenn, told Space.com. “We call it a facility; it’s a test site. A lot of our work doesn’t even happen in the air; there’s a lot of ground integration and testing there.”

“But it’s important, and we’re the only group in all of NASA that does this kind of work… and I think we do it very well.”

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