Artemis II will use laser beams to live-stream 4K moon footage at 260 Mbps — one giant step beyond the S-band radio comms of the Apollo era

NASA's O2O system can handle 260 Mbps transfers and will give us the first glimpses of the far side of the moon.

Tom's Hardware
Yo, tunnel diodes are crazy. Here are some Russian variants, a 10mA and 20mA version. Negative resistance, baby.
#1960s #retroTech #apolloEra #vintageElectronics #testEquipment
#tektronix 576 update:
Cleaning the switches helped more than I suspected in terms of correcting some weird trace anomalies and drifting. Sometime last night, it started drawing a lot of current when I switched to NPN mode. I suspected a stuck relay, and my suspicions were confirmed. I managed to unstick it, but I’m a little worried that it will happen again, so I’ll keep it on the dim bulb variac while doing other work, and will look for a replacement.
The trace is still a bit odd, and compresses into the center 6 divisions or so and can’t expand or move past it. I wish I took a picture of it all open - getting in to clean the switches and access the relay requires disconnecting dozens of individual connectors, and the removal of several assemblies. It’s not the easiest thing to work on.
#electronics #solidState #1960s #retrotech #testEquipment #apolloEra