{"id":151611,"date":"2022-12-01T15:22:35","date_gmt":"2022-12-01T21:22:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/communications-system-achieves-fastest-laser-link-from-space-yet"},"modified":"2022-12-01T15:22:35","modified_gmt":"2022-12-01T21:22:35","slug":"communications-system-achieves-fastest-laser-link-from-space-yet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/communications-system-achieves-fastest-laser-link-from-space-yet","title":{"rendered":"Communications system achieves fastest laser link from space yet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/communications-system-achieves-fastest-laser-link-from-space-yet2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In May 2022, the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) payload onboard a small CubeSat satellite was launched into orbit 300 miles above Earth\u2019s surface. Since then, TBIRD has delivered terabytes of data at record-breaking rates of up to 100 gigabits per second\u2014100 times faster than the fastest internet speeds in most cities\u2014via an optical communication link to a ground-based receiver in California.<\/p>\n<p>This data rate is more than 1,000 times higher than that of the radio-frequency links traditionally used for <a href=\"https:\/\/techxplore.com\/tags\/satellite+communication\/\" rel=\"tag\" class=\"\">satellite communication<\/a> and the highest ever achieved by a laser link from space to ground. And these record-setting speeds were all made possible by a communications payload roughly the size of a tissue box.<\/p>\n<p>MIT Lincoln Laboratory conceptualized the TBIRD mission in 2014 as a means of providing unprecedented capability to science missions at low cost. Science instruments in space today routinely generate more data than can be returned to Earth over typical space-to-ground communications links. With small, low-cost space and ground terminals, TBIRD can enable scientists from around the world to fully take advantage of laser communications to downlink all the data they could ever dream of.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In May 2022, the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) payload onboard a small CubeSat satellite was launched into orbit 300 miles above Earth\u2019s surface. Since then, TBIRD has delivered terabytes of data at record-breaking rates of up to 100 gigabits per second\u2014100 times faster than the fastest internet speeds in most cities\u2014via an optical communication link [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1523,418,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-151611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computing","category-internet","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151611\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}