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NASA Beams Hi-Def Video From Space Via Laser
An anonymous reader writes "NASA successfully beamed a high-definition video 260 miles from the International Space Station to Earth Thursday using a new laser communications instrument. Transmission of 'Hello, World!' as a video message was the first 175-megabit communication for the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS), a technology demonstration that allows NASA to test methods for communication with future spacecraft using higher bandwidth than radio waves." Last September, NASA's LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) showed that they could supply a lunar colony with broadband via lasers.
What wavelengths get through without attenuation/distortion, then?
10 PRINT"Hello World!";
20 GOTO 10
Giant Lazerprinter!
"Kill 'em all and let Root sort 'em out"
Its at the end of TFA, but it should have been a direct link in TFS NASA's OPAL Beams Video from Space
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The latency for a WoW player on the moon would be a bitch, though.
I feel sorry for people that don't drink, because when they get up in the morning, that's as good as they're gonna feel
Stop wasting your lives.
NASA Beams Hi-Def Video From Space
Good god! Haven't they thought this through? Once the RIAA hears of this, it'll be the end for our space program!
Has a better internet connection than you, you know your ISP is shit.
NASA successfully beamed a high-definition video 260 miles from the International Space Station to Earth Thursday using a new laser communications instrument.
Now if they could beam a cheeseburger across the vast expanse of space, they'd really have something useful. Beaming movies across space, although very impressive, will surely be unappreciated falling on robots' digital eyes and ears.
HELLO, ISS! :D Please don't mind the cynics.
How did they get a frickin' shark up to the ISS?
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Why is a laser better than other forms of EM radiation like radio? Channel capacity depends not just on the frequency-limited bandwidth, but also on the ratio of signal to noise. Increasing signal strength or reducing noise will improve bits per second. (The Nyquist limit of twice the frequency bandwidth only governs frequency modulation, not amplitude modulation.)
Assuming background noise is constant, a laser's (much) better focus means more of the energy pumped into the signal reaches the destination, rather than spreading out and being lost to space. More signal => better signal to noise ratio => higher channel capacity for a given frequency bandwidth.
What? I can't even escape the internet on the moon?
And the patent reads: "A method of streaming high definition porn from space to earth in real time."
Give above poster something to do when he's living on the Moon and people on Earth are still starving.
The US government has a battleship orbiting the moon, with a big frikking laser beam.
Nasa is so behind.
I mean, wow... HD video streaming from space? Whodathunkit?
And also why we may never see radio emissions from a highly advanced civilization as efficient comms would all be point to point laser or similar. There would only be a very short period of time that they might use radio like us, then that might be billions of years ago when we weren't listening.
Seriously. I'm more concerned by NASA's apparent lack of data bandwidth from LEO. Or is the big deal that they did it with a LASER instead of using boring old radio waves?
To be an asshole until someone tells you why something was done, rather than attempting to look it up yourself and then voicing you skepticism from an informed point?
wow!!!! http://thienanvietnam.com/