NASA steps closer to perfecting super-fast internet in deep space

Before the Apollo 11 mission in July of 1969, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) did not have a reliable way to transmit data generated in space back to Earth. Bandwidth has been a big problem for NASA because its existing satellite network could only support very limited data streaming in the 4.5 MHz broadcast spectrum, and the majority of that was clogged with data being sent back from the lunar lander and orbiter, with not nearly enough left over for video. High quality photos and videos are one of the biggest challenges facing the Deep Space Network, which is what NASA now calls that system of antenna complexes. In 2017, NASA began experimenting with laser communications systems. And one part of that program, the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery — or TBIRD — system, just achieved an astounding success, transmitting experimental data originating in space onboard the orbiting Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator 3 Cube Satellite back to Earth using an infrared laser beam at 200 gigabits per second. At those speeds, some of those aforementioned transmissions on the Deep Space Network that took hours to complete could have finished in less than a minute, with some of them taking less than a second.

[John Breeden II is the CEO of the Tech Writers Bureau, a group that creates technological thought leadership content]