Quad Lasers Deliver Fast, Earth-Based Internet To the Moon 131
A joint project involving NASA and MIT researchers had demonstrated technology last year that could supply a lunar colony with broadband via lasers ("faster Internet access than many U.S. homes get") and has already demonstrated its worth in communications with spacecraft. From ComputerWorld's article: "The Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) kicked off last September with the launch of NASA's LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer), a research satellite [formerly] orbiting the moon. NASA built a laser communications module into LADEE for use in the high-speed wireless experiment. LLCD has already proved itself, transmitting data from LADEE to Earth at 622Mbps (bits per second) and in the other direction at 19.44Mbps, according to MIT. It beat the fastest-ever radio communication to the moon by a factor of 4,800." Communicating at such distances means overcoming various challenges; one of the biggest is the variability in Earth's atmosphere. The LLCD didn't try to power through the atmosphere at only one spot, therefore, but used four separate beams in the New Mexico desert, each aimed "through a different column of air, where the light-bending effects of the atmosphere are slightly different. That increased the chance that at least one of the beams would reach the receiver on the LADEE. Test results [were] promising, according to MIT, with the 384,633-kilometer optical link providing error-free performance in both darkness and bright sunlight, through partly transparent thin clouds, and through atmospheric turbulence that affected signal power." At the CLEO: 2014 conference in June, researchers will provide a comprehensive explanation of how it worked.
DUH (Score:0, Funny)
The moon rulez!
Suck it earth scum! You can't deny it.
To the Moon, eh? (Score:4, Funny)
"faster Internet access than many U.S. homes get"
That's not hard to do. In the United States, our high speed Internet is much like our high speed rail...
The moon, eh? This will be important when we get around to mining the moon into a block of Swiss cheese for whatever mineral riches it possesses. I predict China will be the first, and we Americans will follow soon after they have opened the door.
Re:DUH (Score:5, Funny)
No one can defeat the quad laser. The bullet is enormous, there is no escaping.
That is far faster than (Score:4, Funny)
their last one [youtube.com]
Re:To the Moon, eh? (Score:5, Funny)
...
The moon, eh? This will be important when we get around to mining the moon into a block of Swiss cheese for whatever mineral riches it possesses. I predict China will be the first, and we Americans will follow soon after they have opened the door.
cheese is not at all popular in China. i predict the French will pioneer this mining effort, or maybe the Swiss... not sure.
Re:To the Moon, eh? (Score:4, Funny)