This October – if all remains on schedule – NASA's Psyche mission will lift off and begin its voyage to the metal-rich asteroid of the same name, which some astronomers believe is the remnant of an ancient protoplanet. But before the Psyche even reaches, well, Psyche, the probe will serve another purpose: demonstrating what some engineers hope is the next generation of sending data between spacecraft and ground control.
Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC), as NASA calls it, eschews the radio waves of past broadcast methods in favor of near-infrared laser light. This is because a laser terminal is slimmer and lighter than a radio antenna and, as laser light has shorter wavelengths than radio signals, an optical beam can transmit more information.
