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    NASA’s Deep Space communications demo exceeds project expectations

    September 19, 2025, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A wide-angle, long-exposure shot of an astronomical observatory on a hill at night. The dome glows with a faint green light against a deep purple and blue sky filled with stars. Dark silhouettes of pine trees are visible in the foreground.
    In this infrared photograph, the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California, beams its eight-laser beacon to the Deep Space Optical Communications flight laser transceiver aboard NASA’s Psyche spacecraft.
     Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

    NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications technology has successfully shown that data encoded in lasers can be reliably transmitted, received, and decoded after traveling millions of miles from Earth at distances comparable to Mars. Nearly two years after launching aboard the agency’s Psyche mission in 2023, the technology demonstration recently completed its 65th and final pass, sending a laser signal to Psyche and receiving the return signal from 218 million miles away.

    “NASA is setting Ame...

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