Dear All,
NASA’s future plans sound great for students with majors in telecommunications and background in optics and remote sensing. Please access the link below to learn more about it and see if you can find jobs related to this project (for those looking for jobs you should start applying for positions at least 6 months before graduation).
Please comment on the article posted here
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/laser-comm.html
“The multiple ground stations are important to demonstrating a fully operational system, Israel said. Cloud cover and turbulent atmospheric conditions impede laser communications, requiring a clear line of sight between the transmitter and receiver. If bad weather prevents a signal from being sent or received at one location, the network could hand over the responsibility to one of the other ground stations or store it for later retransmission.”
This sounds like it will be the biggest issue with this project.
I wonder if they can just boost the signal or shift the signal to not become attenuated by the clouds.
Or maybe they can just bounce the signal from a clear portion to the intended reception site.
The current average distance between Earth and Mars is 225 million km. This mean that if currently the signal takes 90 minutes the signal is travel 41,666,666.67 m/s….
I think that this is right!!!
These guys are crazy smart.
This is a very interisting article. In the future they may have a video conferance with someone who is the space. When was reading the article a question came into my mind, foe example, if the laser needs clean space as lined between transmitter and receiver, how can they communicate if the earth is moving as the mar. Do they need more satelitte between them?