Laser communication to Mars!
- Thread starter Lasernerd
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Steve K
Flashlight Enthusiast
Cool stuff!
I was briefly involved in a project attempting to use lasers to communicate between satellites in low-earth-orbit. This was about 12 or 14 years ago, and used 800mW IR laser. The big problem was getting the laser to live more than 100 hours or so, and getting the collimating optics lined up properly. Since the light only had to travel xx thousand miles, aiming wasn't considered to be a big problem.
In this case, shooting the laser all the way from earth to Mars, aiming will be pretty darned tough! Granted, you can make the beam diverge a bit more, in hopes of actually shining some light on the receiver, but that'll reduce the signal strength. Heck, on our satellite-to-satellite laser system, the receivers were getting so little light that it was claimed that the detector was basically counting photons (seems a bit incredible to me, but that was the rumor).
It'll be interesting to see what happens with this Mars laser-comm project!
Steve K.
I was briefly involved in a project attempting to use lasers to communicate between satellites in low-earth-orbit. This was about 12 or 14 years ago, and used 800mW IR laser. The big problem was getting the laser to live more than 100 hours or so, and getting the collimating optics lined up properly. Since the light only had to travel xx thousand miles, aiming wasn't considered to be a big problem.
In this case, shooting the laser all the way from earth to Mars, aiming will be pretty darned tough! Granted, you can make the beam diverge a bit more, in hopes of actually shining some light on the receiver, but that'll reduce the signal strength. Heck, on our satellite-to-satellite laser system, the receivers were getting so little light that it was claimed that the detector was basically counting photons (seems a bit incredible to me, but that was the rumor).
It'll be interesting to see what happens with this Mars laser-comm project!
Steve K.
Lasernerd
Enlightened
very true! they were just counting photons!
it was called "events"
it was called "events"
jtr1962
Flashaholic
Among the difficulties with aiming this is that you need to aim where Mars or Earth will be when the laser signal gets there. Regardless of whether we use laser or radio, there is still that inherent time delay problem. It can be many minutes before you get an answer.
I thought NASA was working on subspace communications instead of laser. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif Seriously, perhaps tachyon-based communication will solve the delay problem.
I thought NASA was working on subspace communications instead of laser. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif Seriously, perhaps tachyon-based communication will solve the delay problem.
lasercrazy
Flashlight Enthusiast
And what's the point of all this? Who cares about mars, the moon is a lot closer and you can actually land on it.
Stefan
Enlightened
I agree with the moon bit. I figure they should first start with a shorter distance to see if it'll work at all, such as from the Earth to the Moon. A lot easier to aim at a big target such as the moon, in my opinion.
LOL, I remember we had a laser tranceiver set up to send CCTV signals from one building to another two miles away. Many afternoons we would lose the signal, heat expansion between the buildings would misalign the signal path breaking commincations.
