Earth Has Received a Message Laser-Beamed From 10 Million miles (almost 17 million kilometers) Away

Amazing stuff! This is not the latest news, but still very impressive.

If my back of the envelope calculations are correct, then the laser beam took less than 60 seconds to cross the distance. The distance between sun and earth is about 150 million km and light takes about 8 minutes to cross this distance.

"... Another challenge is having the system adapt its positioning configuration in real time. In this latest test, the laser photons took about 50 seconds to get from spacecraft to telescope, and both are hurtling through space while this is happening. ..."

"NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment has beamed a near-infrared laser encoded with test data from nearly 10 million miles (16 million kilometers) away – about 40 times farther than the Moon is from Earth – to the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California. This is the farthest-ever demonstration of optical communications. ...

Test data also was sent simultaneously via the uplink and downlink lasers, a procedure known as “closing the link” that is a primary objective for the experiment. While the technology demonstration isn’t transmitting Psyche mission data, it works closely with the Psyche mission-support team to ensure DSOC operations don’t interfere with those of the spacecraft. ...
The DSOC experiment aims to demonstrate data transmission rates 10 to 100 times greater than the state-of-the-art radio frequency systems used by spacecraft today. ..."

Earth Has Received a Message Laser-Beamed From 10 Million Miles Away : ScienceAlert

NASA’s Deep Space Optical Comm Demo Sends, Receives First Data DSOC, an experiment that could transform how spacecraft communicate, has achieved ‘first light,’ sending data via laser to and from far beyond the Moon for the first time.

NASA’s Space Station Laser Comm Terminal Achieves First Link A NASA technology experiment on the International Space Station completed its first laser link with an in-orbit laser relay system on Dec. 5, 2023. Together, they complete NASA’s first two-way, end-to-end laser relay system.

There is also a YouTube video available