"Earth Receives Laser-Beamed Message from 10 Million Miles Away"

NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment successfully transmitted a near-infrared laser beam encoded with test data from nearly 10 million miles away to the Hale Telescope at Caltech's Palomar Observatory in California. This marks the farthest-ever demonstration of laser communications and paves the way for higher-data-rate communications in support of future space missions, including sending humans to Mars. Using optical communications will significantly increase the capacity of current radio systems used by spacecraft. The DSOC experiment is part of NASA's Psyche spacecraft mission to study the asteroid Psyche 16.