A broadband connection on the moon might just make information transfer from the Earth to the moon more simpler. Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT- Lincoln laboratory) working in collaboration with NASA demonstrated a broadband connection on the moon that would simplify data transfer from people on Earth and astronomers on the moon.
The feat was made possible with four telescopes at ground level used to send uplink signals. A laser transmitter feeds information onto the telescopes in the form of invisible infrared light pulse codes. Each of the four telescopes transmit these codes through different air columns due to which the chances of information reaching the receiver is multiplied. A satellite currently going around the moon houses the receiver in the form of a telescope, that receives the laser beams and transfers them onto optical fibers.A photo-detector then converts the light pulses into electrical pulses that are finally turned into data.
“Communicating at high data rates from Earth to the moon with laser beams is challenging because of the 400,000-kilometer distance spreading out the light beam. It’s doubly difficult going through the atmosphere, because turbulence can bend light—causing rapid fading or dropouts of the signal at the receiver.
The on-orbit performance was excellent and close to what we’d predicted, giving us confidence that we have a good understanding of the underlying physics”
says Mark Stevens, a research scientist at MIT. The details of the data transfer technology will be presented by the team at the Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) in California on June 9, 2014 until which the findings cab be viewed at the Optical Society website.