4K video footage from spacecraft to International Space Station streamed by NASA

Representative illustration of a laser communications (Image Credit: NASA/Dave Ryan)

NASA’s Glenn Research Center team in Cleveland has accomplished a milestone of streaming 4K video footage from spacecraft to the International Space Station (ISS), setting a great space communication system using laser technology.

The flight was a NASA initiative to test data sharing from space and high-quality video sharing for future human missions. NASA is planning several space missions that require good navigation and communication and embracing laser communication is proving to be effective for information sharing between Earth and space.

This communication test was done to prepare for the upcoming moon mission the Artemis mission during which astronauts can do the live coverage. Earlier NASA used radio to establish communication and send information to the Earth, but this new technology of laser communication uses infrared light to transmit 10 to 100 more data and even faster compared to the radio frequency communication system.

Dr. Daniel Raible, principal investigator for the HDTN project at Glenn, said, “These experiments are a tremendous accomplishment,” He further added, “We can now build upon the success of streaming 4K HD videos to and from the space station to provide future capabilities, like HD videoconferencing, for our Artemis astronauts, which will be important for crew health and activity coordination.”

According to NASA, Glenn engineers on Pilatus PC-12 aircraft installed a laser terminal, then the aircraft flew over Lake Erie from where it sent the data to the ground station in Cleveland.

From that station, the data was sent to the NASA facility located in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where scientists used light signals to send the data.  These signals travelled 22,000 miles away from Earth to NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) platform in space.

The signal from LCRD was shared with the  ILLUMA-T (Integrated LCRD LEO User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) attached to the orbiting laboratory, and then the data was delivered back to Earth.

This whole experiment developed a new communication system  High-Rate Delay Tolerant Networking (HDTN), giving the coverage. James Demers, chief of aircraft operations at Glenn, said, “Teams at Glenn ensure new ideas are not stuck in a lab, but actually flown in the relevant environment to ensure this technology can be matured to improve the lives of all of us.”

NASA claims that every flight experiment enhanced technology and performance. This accomplishment creates new and intriguing opportunities, such as improving crew health and activity coordination during space missions and enabling HD videoconferencing for Artemis astronauts.