NASA Testing Frickin' Laser Communications

itwbennett writes "The lunar laser communications demonstration will be part of the agency's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission, which is scheduled to launch on Sept. 6. Here's how the system will work: When the satellite is in orbit around the moon and visible from Earth, one of three ground stations will shoot a laser towards its approximate location. The laser beam from Earth will scan a patch of sky and should illuminate the spacecraft at some point. When that happens, the spacecraft will begin transmitting its own laser towards the ground station and the two will lock on to each other. The technology should allow an upstream data rate, from the Earth to the spacecraft, of around 20Mbps and a much faster downstream rate of 622Mbps. That's roughly six times the speed that's currently possible with radio-based transmission, said Don Cornwell, mission manager for the lunar laser communications demonstration."

Comments

Speed, yes. Latency... NO.

[girlintraining]

The latency will be absolute shit. Useless for most bandwidth-intensive internet applications. Imagine trying to play a game with twice the lag of a dialup modem. Not only that, but one cloud in the sky and it's game over, man.

Not reliable at all.

Re:Speed, yes. Latency... NO.

[peragrin]

Wooooosh.

Girlintraining wants to play WOW from their secret moon base. Blizzard won't put a server up there for those of us with hidden moon bases.(something to do with Nazi space zeppelins).

Re:freaking lasers

[Shark]

Nah, I'm here. The laser hadn't locked in yet. Do you know how hard it is to aim your head at something in frickin' space?! Gimme a break, jeez...