Thursday, April 30, 2026

What does it take to call home from the Moon?

The Apollo 11 lunar landing module "Eagle," with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin aboard. The telemetry system used during the Apollo missions was slow and inefficient unlike the new laser system used on Artemis (Credit : NASA)

When NASA's Artemis II crew swung around the Moon in April, the world watched in extraordinary detail and a breakthrough laser communications system was the reason why. Bolted to the outside of the Orion capsule, a compact optical terminal beamed 484 gigabytes of data back to Earth using invisible infrared light, outpacing traditional radio systems by a factor of tens. The result was some of the most vivid imagery ever captured in deep space, and a technology demonstration that will fundamentally change how humanity communicates beyond Earth.



No comments:

Post a Comment