During the original US missions to the moon in the 1960s and ’70s, astronauts relied on radio-frequency systems to communicate, sending grainy, low-quality images and videos to Earth. But on the Artemis II Orion mission in April, spacecraft transmitted crystal-clear footage at speeds on par with those of home internet connections.
The livestreams so many people enjoyed were made possible through the Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O), developed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory in collaboration with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Based on infrared laser light, which can transmit 10 to 100 times more data per second than radio waves, the system downlinked nearly half a terabyte of data at up to 260 megabits per second. This data trove contained never-before-seen views of the basins and craters on the far side of the moon, a crescent Earth setting behind the moon, a nearly hour-long total solar eclipse, and flashes of light from tiny meteoroids striking the lunar surface.
“Our goal was to demonstrate O2O’s operational utility for human spaceflight, extending the high-bandwidth connections that internet users enjoy on Earth to astronauts in deep space,” says lead systems engineer Farzana Khatri ’90, SM ’92, PhD ’96, a senior staff member in Lincoln Lab’s Optical and Quantum Communications Group.
“Participating in this historic mission … and having O2O be useful—I couldn’t have asked for anything more amazing in my career,” she says.