monica_b1998Artemis 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
ZachariahNASA’s Artemis II mission blasted off on Wednesday. Now brace yourselves for exciting high-resolution 4K footage live-streamed from the surface of the moon thanks to NASA’s laser-based O2O system. The cutting-edge Orion Artemis II Optical Communications system (O2O) will be used to beam 4K moon footage at up to 260 Mbps. We should also be treated to never-before-seen views of “the far side of the Moon, using Nikon digital cameras,” reports The BBC’s Sky at Night magazine…
Found another description from NASA, but I’d like to read more details. Is it encrypted, or can anyone with an IR telescope and demodulator listen in? What’s the uplink speed?
Great. Just wonderful.
Now even the back of the Moon has a better internet connection than my home town in rural Germany.
Now even the back of the Moon has a better internet connection than my home town in rural Germany.
Would have been hilarious if they had carried a small server for a multi-player FPS game so the lag would have only been an issue for everyone but the astronauts.
“Augh! I just got fragged by Christina Koch again!”
Does this mean Dota on the moon will have better latency
Nope. S-Band had ~2500 ms ping, a laser will be the same. But, more bandwidth now! So you still can’t play Pudge.
For a deep dive into the old Apollo communications, check out the YouTube channel Curiousmarc. His team and him have been working on restoring (and playing around with) old Apollo hardware. They go through a lot of the features and functionality, as well as teardowns, repairs and testing all of it.
CuriousMarc
Videos documenting restorations of exceptional vintage electronics and early computers, space hardware and the odd mechanical calculator or Teletype. It often showcases my Hewlett-Packard test equipment collection and, from time to time, my R2-D2 robot build. Things rarely work when I start, but almost always do when I end. A nerdy place for your inner engineer, to celebrate engineering exploits of our predecessors, and learn a lot from it. To contact me, use the CAPTCHA protected email link below.
The biggest fuckup in archival history was when some NASA goon wiped the original moon landing tapes by mistake.
MalReynoldsDidn’t the Apollos use (Hassleblad 70mm 3900x3900) film. This is a downgrade. (but it’s streaming, hur, hur). Hopefully there’s some better cameras as well.
This whole situation is like the opening of a sci-fi story where the astronauts transit the far side of the Moon and return to find the Earth a smoking ruin.
🌞 Alexander Daychilde 🌞one giant step
ಠ_ಠ