Monisha Ravisetti is Space.com's Astronomy Editor. She covers black holes, star explosions, gravitational waves, exoplanet discoveries and other enigmas hidden across the fabric of space and time. Previously, she was a science writer at CNET, and before that, reported for The Academic Times.
Late last year, NASA scientists pressed start on a highly anticipated space mission. Basically, they launched a spacecraft toward an asteroid that could very well be made entirely of metal, a composition that appears to be a rarity — at least, in our solar system's vicinity. The robotic adventurer is called Psyche, and its namesake is the giant rock that guides its journey: Psyche 16.
"We'd been sending test and diagnostic data in our downlinks from Psyche," Srinivasan said."This represents a significant milestone for the project by showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft’s radio frequency comms system." During the April 8 test, however, DSOC didn't max out its data transmission rates like it did for Taters' video. The message arrived at DSOC's primary downlink ground station at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, traveling at a maximum rate of 25 Mbps, NASA writes in the statement — though emphasizing how even that level far surpasses the project's goal of at least 1 Mbps at this kind of distance.
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