Over the weekend, NASA and MIT made spaceflight history when their Lunar Laser Communications Demonstrator (LLCD) beamed data at 622 megabits per second—5 times the current rate—back from a spacecraft in lunar orbit.

In an interview with Popular Mechanics, Don Cornwell, mission manager at NASA's Goddard Fight Center, said that LLCD "is working better than expected" after its initial tests. "We just finished the first four days, and it has been extremely successful, beyond our expectations."

Lasers could enhance space communications and lead to radical changes in spacecraft design. Today's spacecraft communicate with radio, but radiofrequency wavelengths are so long that they require large dishes to capture the signals. Laser wavelengths are 10,000 times shorter than radio, the upshot being that a spacecraft could deliver much more data then even the best modern radio system. For scale, NASA says that the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft that's carrying this laser experiment would take 639 hours to download an average-length HD movie using ordinary S-band communications. LLCD could download the film in less than eight minutes.

The lunar laser demonstrator achieved 622 megabits per second when the moon was high in the sky, and lower rates (311 megabits per second) when the moon was low on the horizon—that's because the laser had to cut through more of Earth's atmosphere, Cornwell says. This rage of data exchange speeds was intentional; the experiment was meant to showcase the system's flexibility (though beaming through the atmosphere when the moon is low in the sky will not impact the transmission rate in future tests).

During this weekend's test, the light-speed signals from the moon-orbiting spacecraft traveled to a ground station at White Sands, N.M. MIT laboratory fellow Don Boroson watched anxiously from MIT's Lincoln Lab in Massachusetts, waiting for the hardware on the earth and in space to find each other. The researchers knew that this part of the mission could be problematic. The spacecraft has a detector that scans for a signal from the ground terminal, essentially telling the moon probe where to aim the laser-encoded information.

"We thought the ground terminal would have to do a little searching, but it turned out it was pointed perfectly," Boroson says. "We turned it on and all cheered."

The connection was almost instantaneous. After the spacecraft and ground terminal connected, a 4-inch laser beam travelled 238,000 miles from the spacecraft orbiting the moon to New Mexico. There was no rendition of "Mary Had a Little Lamb" to mark the occasion, just a bit of binary code the communications industry uses as a test signal. "Each next step—data rates, data transfers, and so on—was nerve-wracking and exciting," Boroson says. "One by one, we ticked off the goals. I was in the operations center all weekend."

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The experiment's success is the first big win for the LADEE moon probe. The spacecraft launched from Wallops Island, Va. and reached lunar orbit on October 6. LADEE's main mission is to study the way moon dust moves across the lunar surface through the very thin atmosphere (or exosphere, the term scientists use for such a thin layer.)

This week, LADEE scientists have control of the spacecraft; they're shaking down its sensors for the upcoming research. When they are done, the laser communication team will have several other multiple-day opportunities to test the LLCD, which will help the team to prove the concept works in different conditions. "The whole purpose is to build confidence in laser communications," Cornwell says.

The next step for laser space communications will occur closer to home. In 2016, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) will hitch a ride into space on a communications satellite. In 2017, the LCRD will begin beaming 1.25 gigabits per second of coded information. The signals will travel from one ground station to the satellite and bounce back to another ground station. Even more groundbreaking, the project will be in orbit for two to five years, operating 24 hours a day.

Cornwell and Boroson—known in the space communities as "The Dons"—say the lessons learned from the lunar demonstrator have been built into the LCRD. For now, the pair are both resting, waiting for their next 4-day marathon of firing lasers back and forth to the moon. "It's all very fulfilling," Boroson says. "We're all very happy and sleepy."

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