A NASA orbiter that is set to launch this week will bring broadband capabilities to the moon.
Aboard the orbiter, which is called the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), is technology to enable two-way laser communication between Earth and the moon.
As explained by New Scientist:
LADEE will carry a laser with a near-infrared wavelength that is thousands of times shorter, as part of the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration experiment. LLCD will beam signals to Earth at 622 megabits per second, six times as fast as is currently possible from the moon.
Through this new technology, we’ll be able to receive information from the moon in a matter of seconds.
According to NASA:
"Using a small and lightweight telescope, LLCD will transmit hundreds of millions of laser pulses each second to one of three stations on Earth — each of which was chosen for its cloud-free skies.”
It is important for the stations to be located in cloud-free areas because bad weather can interrupt the laser signals. As New Scientist reports, the three stations are located in New Mexico, California and Spain — all known for their clear skies.
First, the space and ground terminals must both locate each other for data transfer to occur. Next, the two sides communicate through illumination beams and hundreds of millions of megabytes transfer between them within a second.
When the first photo was taken from the moon — the now-famous Earthrise from 1968 — it took several days before the world got to see it. With this broadband technology, that drawn-out delivery is a thing of the past.
While LLCD is only set to operate during the first month of the mission, NASA has some big goals for the future — along the lines of 3D video streams and enabled telepresence on the moon.
Image: Flickr, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center