NASA Introduces Space Wi-Fi
Astronauts may soon have a whole new way to communicate with individuals and space stations while in space. A team of researchers and scientists from MIT are working with NASA to create wireless, Internet access on the moon. The Optical Society (OSA) is preparing a detailed overview of their work.
The scientists have come up with ways to provide a communication uplink between the Earth and moon by using four different telescopes. The telescopes send the uplink signal to the moon by sending information coded as pulses of invisible infrared light. A satellite orbiting the moon then receives the information by collecting the infrared light. “From there,” said OSA, “the signal in the fiber is amplified about 30,000 times. A photodetector converts the pulses of light into electrical pulses that are in turn converted into data bit patterns that carry the transmitted message. Of the 40-watt signals sent by the transmitter, less than a billionth of a watt is received at the satellite—but that’s still about 10 times the signal necessary to achieve error-free communication.”
There are difficulties in trying to send Internet connections to the moon, as the infrared light has to go through our atmosphere, where there is turbulence that could disrupt the signal. The OSA overview is expected to be presented at the Conference on Laser and Electro-Optics (CLEO) in California on June 9.
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