The tiny NASA satellite TBIRD (“TeraByte InfraRed Delivery”) broke a record: it transmitted data from space to earth at a speed that had never been beaten before. And with the help a laser.
From its position in Earth orbit, TBIRD 3,6 Terabyte of data to the ground station at a rate of 200 gigabits per second (Gbit/s) or 25 gigabytes/second. NASA recently shared this in an press release with. The satellite has thus achieved its previous record of 100 Gbit/swhich he set up last summer, was clearly exceeded.
It is also the highest speedwhich has ever been achieved with laser light between space and earth, according to the US space agency.
“Reaching 100 Gbps in June was groundbreaking, and now we’ve doubled that data rate — this will change the way we communicate in space,” says Beth Timesthe Head of Mission of TBIRD.
Better communication for future missions
TBIRD was specifically designed to use laser communication technology – too optical radio link called – to test and improve NASA. NASA currently uses radio waves, to transmit data to and from their spacecraft. This is the same technology that is used, for example, in car radios or mobile communications.
Since the space agency as part of the Artemis missions but people to Mond and wants to send beyond that, she is researching more effective communication methods. According to the authority, the switch from radio waves to lasers would be comparable to switching from dialing into the Internet via modem to one Broadband internet connection.
Laser technology to increase data limit
In the NASA method will data through infrared rayswhich are not visible to the naked eye, to a receiver transfer. This technology has the potential to significantly increase data transfer rates. That means satellites could send and receive more information in a single transmission in the future.
The small satellite is just about the size of a tissue box.
© NASA
“The laser communication is that missing linkwhich will enable the scientific discoveries of the future,” says Head of Mission Keer with a view to future missions. Optical radio link will enable the full potential of huge amounts of data to exhaust.
