NASA announced in November they had received contact from a spacecraft more than 10 million miles away in our cosmos.
The laser-beam signal was picked up November 14 and is the first official data received from NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, according to the agency. The message came from the Psyche spacecraft, which was launched in early October, headed for a metal-rich asteroid deep inside of our solar system.
“Achieving first light is one of many critical DSOC milestones in the coming months, paving the way toward higher-data-rate communications capable of sending scientific information, high-definition imagery, and streaming video in support of humanity’s next giant leap: sending humans to Mars,” Trudy Kortes, director of Technology Demonstrations for the Space Technology Mission Directorate at NASA’s Headquarters in Washington, said.
NASA is working in conjunction with SpaceX on the project. The spacecraft was launched aboard the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. (RELATED: Asteroid NASA Hit In Diversion Mission Is Acting So Mysteriously, An Investigation Was Launched)
With the success of this first test, the DSOC team will focus on sending signals back and forth to Earth, checking to see how far it can go while still sending us transmissions, according to NASA. The purpose of the project is the development of communications systems for spacecraft with astronauts on board.