Is a Laser Data Link 1.5 Million Kilometers Feasible? 304
An anonymous reader writes "On the Canary Islands last week, a team from Oerlikon Space demonstrated the feasibility of a laser link across a distance of 1.5 million kilometers for the first time ever. In the future, laser links like this one will be able to transmit data across huge distances through the universe far more rapidly and efficiently than is possible using conventional radio links today."
Re:Never saw this coming (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting to use this with radio telescopes (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to me that this would be especially useful to reduce the amount of induced radio noise when communicating with L1 (etc) radio telescopes or other instruments potentially sensitive to the normal radio frequencies used for communication, eg keep the comms out-of-band of what is being measured as far as possible.
Rgds
Damon
Re:Never saw this coming (Score:3, Insightful)
Not exclusive concepts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Question about lasers (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:"far more rapidly" (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Never saw this coming (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Question about lasers (Score:5, Insightful)
This is a very good point... based on that logic.. (Score:2, Insightful)
While we're at it, Coal Plants do a good job at producing energy and they work too... lets forget about all that fandangled alternate energy source stuff...
While were at it.. smoke signals work too.. no need for complicated technology like telephone and email...
okay.. now that my sarcasm limit has been reached... because something works is not a good reason for ignoring technology that can potentially supercede it...
Re:Never saw this coming (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? And, basically the same question, less than 70kb per what?
Re:Never saw this coming (Score:3, Insightful)
The issue is not whether you get data at all, but whether you can transmit at broadband speeds. I am pretty sure that at this point of
its flight Voyager does nothing else but send a few byte pings every once in a while.
The problems laser links would solve would be in the order of streaming HD video from Mars to Earth.
Who would have thought..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Who would have though the Canary Islands are that big?
-Charlie
Re:Never saw this coming (Score:1, Insightful)
Useful for Lunar X Prize? (Score:2, Insightful)