The internet will soon be available in a galaxy near you as Nasa plan to trial laser powered space broadband. This broadband will be able to potentially send 100 Megabytes per second, a much better spead than Nasa’s current radio frequency which can only transmit 5 Megabytes per second. At the moment it take 90 minutes to beam back an image from Mars to Earth. The laser powered broadband on the other hand will take only 5 mintues. That’s one giant leap for the internet.
For this trial a satellite will be sent up with telescopes, lasers, mirrors, pointing and tracking systems and 2 modems bolted on board. The transmissions and data will be relayed to two different ground stations as shown on the photo below.
Photo by Nasa
Written by Tom Hancock
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