Deep Space Communication Technology

- Overview

Deep space communication technology is a collection of technologies that allow for communication with spacecraft beyond Earth's atmosphere. These technologies include radio waves and laser beams. 

Radio wave technologies:

• Deep Space Network (DSN) ; A network of large antennas in the United States, Australia, and Spain that communicate with spacecraft using radio waves
• Power-efficient channel codes: Technologies that allow for reliable transmission of data from deep space to Earth
• Low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes: Technologies that allow for data rates above 1 Gb/s
• Turbo codes: Technologies that can operate on channels with noise power that's more than five times higher than the signal power

Laser beam technologies: 

• Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC): A NASA system that uses laser beams to communicate with spacecraft
• Optical Communication Telescope Laboratory (OCTL): A laboratory at NASA's Table Mountain Facility that uses a laser to transmit low-rate data to spacecraft
• Superconducting nanowire photon-counting receiver: A receiver developed by JPL that receives high-rate data from spacecraft

DSOC is designed to improve the speed and reliability of communications with spacecraft. It allows for higher resolution images, larger volumes of data, and even streaming video. 

NASA's DSOC experiment is the agency's first demonstration of optical communications beyond the Earth-Moon system. DSOC is a system that consists of a flight laser transceiver, a ground laser transmitter, and a ground laser receiver.

[More to come ...]