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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."
I have talked with the people doing the laser comm experiment on LADEE - it is just a technology demo, and is not needed for the LADEE mission primary science goals at all. (That is the difference between a science mission, such as LADEE, and a technology demonstration mission, such as Deep Space 1, where the science is secondary and can depend on the successful working of the new gizmo.)
If it works on LADEE, then someone can propose doing it on a real mission (i.e., one that would depend on it), just as the ion engines from Deep Space 1 are now powering DAWN.