Space dwellers will be able to enjoy the luxury of a data communication technology on the Moon, enabling large data transfers and even high-definition video streaming, Researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory, working with NASA, demonstrated.
Future generations will live and work on the Moon while communicating with their home planet via a broadband connection, Press Trust of India reported.
At the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO), being held next month in California, the team will present new details and the first comprehensive overview of the on-orbit performance of their record-shattering laser-based communication uplink between the Moon and Earth, which beat the previous record transmission speed by a factor of 4,800.
Although the team's accomplishments were stated in earlier reports, details of the implementation were not provided.
"This will be the first time that we present both the implementation overview and how well it actually worked," said Mark Stevens of MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
"The on-orbit performance was excellent and close to what we'd predicted, giving us confidence that we have a good understanding of the underlying physics," Stevens said.
Last year, the team made history when their Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) transmitted data over the 384,633 kilometers between the Moon and Earth at a download rate of 622 megabits per second, faster than any radio frequency (RF) system.
According to PTI, data from the Earth to the Moon was also transmitted at 19.44 megabits per second, a factor of 4,800 times faster than the best RF uplink ever used.
"Communicating at high data rates from Earth to the Moon with laser beams is challenging because of the 400,000 kilometer distance spreading out the light beam," Stevens said.
"It's doubly difficult going through the atmosphere, because turbulence can bend light-causing rapid fading or dropouts of the signal at the receiver," said Stevens.
