NARRATOR
In this final episode of a five-part series about the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration, we’ll encounter some upcoming optical communications missions that build on the success of LCRD, testing new and unique capabilities and providing missions with incredible data rates over laser links.
I’m Danny Baird. This is “The Invisible Network.”
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KENDALL MAULDIN
My name is Kendall Mauldin, and I am the… Chief of the Technology Enterprise Mission Pathfinder Office — known as TEMPO — at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
NARRATOR
Earlier in his career, Kendall actually worked on LCRD.
KENDALL MAULDIN
I was in charge of the what’s known as the space switching unit, the SSU, which is one of the subsystems that are onboard the LCRD flight payload… The space switching unit is essentially… could be thought of as the central controller of the payload, making sure that all of the other subsystems have what they need as far as data, but also contains what’s known as a high speed switch, which is switching high speed data between multiple optical comm modems. So, a lot of the high speed optical comm data that is being relayed by LCRD flows through the space switching unit.
NARRATOR
Now, as TEMPO Chief, Kendall leads an office that has played — and continues to play — a profound role in the development of optical communications technologies.
KENDALL MAULDIN
The TEMPO office is an organization which basically incubates new ideas, and new projects, or even newer technologies, or technologies that are just coming into a stage of being able to be infused into actual missions and come into more of an implementation phase. And so we essentially are an incubator for many of those different new start activities, new business activities, but also being able to connect the right… up-and-coming technologies with user mission needs from a comm and nav standpoint…
We’ve seen several projects and activities now become their own entities with their own goals and objectives that started out as part of that incubator model. So, we look to try to get things off the ground and through their first steps of becoming their own project or their own capability for the agency…
One of the roles that we’ve played is when we have new missions — let’s say coming to various different study phases — and they’re looking at their data needs that are coming up… Data rates and needs for data continue to increase as various different sensors, science detectors — becoming more and more high resolution and higher quality… higher volumes of data — that we… have been able to assist those missions… understanding what capabilities optical comm can bring to the table.
And so that’s one of the roles we’ve been able to play, as well as supporting projects and capability demonstrations that are currently happening… regarding optical comms, such as the ILLUMA-T demonstration coming up on the International Space Station.
NARRATOR
TEMPO has incubated many of Goddard’s optical missions. The Integrated LCRD Low-Earth Orbit User Modem and Amplifier Terminal, or ILLUMA-T, which will make the space station LCRD’s first user, began its life in TEMPO.
CHETAN SAYAL
Hello, my name is Chetan Sayal, and I am the… Project Manager for ILLUMA-T.
ILLUMA-T’s objective is to demonstrate data transfer between low-Earth orbit and ground through a geosynchronous relay satellite. In other words, without LCRD, ILLUMA-T can’t meet its objective.
ILLUMA-T is a terminal that attaches to the Japanese [Experiment] Module, also known as the JEM, on the [space station] and it provides the optical forward link and return link. The forward link is spec-ed at 51 megabits-per-second, and the return link is spec-ed at 1.2 gigabits-per-second. And that’s from the [space station] to the ground station with LCRD being the relay.
If you’re actually standing in front of ILLUMA-T, ILLUMA-T looks like a large enclosed rectangular box that is about six feet long, two and a half feet wide and two and a half feet high. And it weighs in at about 400 kilograms. Along the width of ILLUMA-T is the optical head which, once attached to the JEM, would point towards LCRD.
NARRATOR
ILLUMA-T left TEMPO a few years back and has since become its own project. Since then, TEMPO has continued to innovate, nurturing burgeoning optical comms efforts to fruition.
Beth Keer serves as the project manager for one of TEMPO’s upcoming optical communications missions:
BETH KEER
So, TBIRD is the Terabyte Infrared Delivery system. Basically, it’s a development project — technology development project — where we’re looking at commercialization for optical communication… What we’ve done is set the program up so that we take existing hardware that’s available for commercial use — mostly non-flight hardware —…redesigning it, testing those parts, and making them flight ready, so that they can operate in space…
NARRATOR
Commercially available hardware can be far cheaper than custom-built components, but they often aren’t designed or tested for the rigors of space. With an anticipated launch in 2022, TBIRD is a small satellite no bigger than a standard shoebox that will test terrestrial optical communications technologies in space.
But that’s not all:
BETH KEER
One of the other goals is to demonstrate the downlink at 200 gigabits-per-second, which is much, much faster than anything that can be done in the in the RF.
NARRATOR
In space communications, 200 gigabits-per-second is faster than most radio frequency systems. It’s two hundred times faster than LCRD. It’s more than a hundred times faster than the highest fiber optic internet speeds enjoyed by most Americans in their homes. These data rates will allow TBIRD to downlink large amounts of data in bursts as it passes over optical ground stations.
BETH KEER
The super exciting thing about optical communications is just the game-changing aspects of it. As far as data communications in the past, we’ve been designing our instruments and our spacecraft… around the constraint of how much data we can get down… With optical comm, we’re blowing that out of the water as far as the amount of data that we can get back.
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NARRATOR
TBIRD isn’t the only project at Goddard taking advantage of commercially available hardware to advance optical communications. Haleh Safavi leads an effort using commercial components to develop a Low-Cost Optical Terminal, or LCOT.
HALEH SAFAVI
The purpose of LCOT: we want to build a… blueprint for future ground stations. First of all, we want to help the industry just identify the gaps. For example, before this, there was no commercial… receiver telescope. We… identified that… built this spec and worked with… our receive telescope vendor, and right now… this receive telescope is actually their catalog item.
NARRATOR
The more parts made available commercially, the easier and the cheaper it will be for NASA to implement new ground stations. More optical ground stations will encourage new missions to adopt laser communications and all the benefits that come along with it!
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NARRATOR
In addition to efforts to advance commercial optical communications technologies, Goddard engineers are also leveraging the benefits of optical communications for the Artemis missions.
The Laser-Enhanced Mission Communications Navigation and Operational Services pipeline project, or LEMNOS, is developing the Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System, or O2O, which will allow lunar astronauts to send ultra-high-definition video to Earth from the Moon.
Nikki Desch oversees development of the ground stations that will communicate with O2O:
NIKKI DESCH
So, I oversee the O2O ground segment implementation… We just passed our series of system design reviews — which we’re really excited about — and they just moved into the development phase… We are building one of the two ground stations that’s going to support the mission when it’s supposed to launch… And the other one — the other ground station — is… Table Mountain Facility… that’s managed by JPL. We are working in conjunction with JPL to create these ground stations and help them route their data through to Johnson Space Center during that during that 10-day period of operations…
NARRATOR
If you’re interested in learning more about O2O and LEMNOS, check out episode two of the podcast!
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NARRATOR
Moving beyond Artemis astronauts’ journey to the Moon, even deeper into space, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Deep Space Optical Communications experiment, or DSOC, will demonstrate communications over laser links at distances never attempted before.
STEVE TOWNES
I’m Steve Townes. And I am the Chief Technologist of the Interplanetary Network Directorate at JPL, which basically does the Deep Space Network and a lot of the integrated mission operations, ground data systems… for primarily planetary robotic missions…
This is this is all run from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory here in Pasadena, California… although obviously, we interact with all the other NASA centers that have missions typically using the Deep Space Network.
NARRATOR
Steve Townes is a key player on DSOC, which will fly aboard a mission to 16 Psyche, an asteroid orbiting the Sun between Mars and Jupiter. You can learn more about DSOC in episode two of the podcast as well.
STEVE TOWNES
It’s actually a pretty cool project for any number of reasons… Obviously two major pieces to DSOC: the flight terminal and the ground terminals. In this case, there’s actually two.
The main receive terminal will be the Palomar Hale Telescope on Palomar mountain, which is south of here… For any anybody who ever gets a chance to go by there, it’s a spectacular telescope: five-meter diameter built in 30s or 40s, I think, so really solid construction…
The uplink terminal will actually be coming from Table Mountain.
NARRATOR
The same California optical communications facility supporting LCRD and O2O will also be supporting DSOC. The sorts of testing being done for DSOC is similar to LCRD, but geared towards addressing the unique challenges of communicating from significantly farther from Earth.
STEVE TOWNES
Number of things DSOC is testing. One, of course, is the data rates. We’ve got our link calculations that say on this kind of a day, with this kind of atmosphere, this kind of clouds… and… that far away, we should be able to get this data rate.
So one of the first things is, “Do we really understand the atmosphere? Do we really understand how well the system is working? Is it really generating the data that we expect?”
NARRATOR
In addition to growing our understanding of how optical communications systems perform in real, deep space scenarios, DSOC will help NASA to further mature the technology overall. Future systems could be smaller, more power efficient, and less heavy.
STEVE TOWNES
Technology maturity — probably more than anything else — is really going to be the key driver.
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NARRATOR
Closer to home than DSOC’s adventure to the asteroid belt, optical communications is laying the foundation for other revolutionary new ways of communicating. One example of this is quantum networking, where engineers take advantage of the physical properties of individual photons, or light particles.
NASSER BARGHOUTY
I’m Nasser Barghouty. I’m currently serving as the chief scientist for NASA SCaN. I also lead SCaN’s quantum science and technology efforts…
What is quantum networking? Just like classical networks, quantum networks link quantum processors like computers… with each other, using either fiber optics or free space…
In communication, the basic commodity that we use to be able to write and read information is the qubit. And to translate information from one node to the other, quantum entanglement —and in particular, also quantum swapping — become critical to any quantum communications network…
Entanglement is predicated by quantum mechanical phenomenon and the microscopic physics that controls the macroscopic world, something called superposition, where a system can be in more than one position at a single instant in time, which is not what we’re used to in the macroscopic world…
Let’s suppose you — for the sake of this discussion — you produce two photons. If they share a property and that property is conserved… they will continue to share it and obey that conservation… even though they could be separated by light years, in principle…
So, if you have two photons, one will have a spin up and one [will have] a spin down and they will cancel each other. So, that’s zero spin. That’s conserving the spin. Now, separate those visually in your mind — to huge distances — and they still will know about each other, for if one were to flip its spin in principle, from up to down, from down to up, the other one has to instantaneously also change its spin state, such that the total spin is still zero…
Their quantum states are entangled in such a way to conserve spin. And that’s independent of distance…
Entanglement swapping is actually a trick or a protocol in quantum communications, where we can actually transfer a quantum state from one quantum object to the other. Like you could transfer the spin of this photon we just discussed without actually physically moving the photon. So, it’s teleportation of a quantum state. And that term is used by the way — and it’s accurate — but you’re not really teleporting the physical object — which in this case is a photon —…but its quantum state, the quantum state has been teleported.
NARRATOR
Photons? Teleportation? Entanglement? Quantum states? How will these abstract physics principles transform NASA’s networks?
NASSER BARGHOUTY
At a very high level… the security of the communication between the networks and the nodes would be at a very different level from everything we’re used to… Some experts believe it would be totally, provably secure… In other words, if you were to eavesdrop on a… quantum communication channel… it doesn’t matter what you do, you will affect the outcome of that channel. In other words, you cannot do it so cleanly. Quantum physics prevents you from doing that…
In other words, if you want to measure the state of a photon, you will change the state of that photon. And if the photon is part of your communication channel, then people know somebody is eavesdropping.
NARRATOR
But what does all of this have to do with LCRD? Well, optical communications technologies are inextricably linked with quantum networking capabilities.
NASSER BARGHOUTY
If your… quantum object is a qubit, and your photon is that qubit, and photons are light [or] lasers on different wavelengths. So the infrastructure — the highway system — these photons will use as they transmit information back and forth as qubits, will use the optical networks, so they’re tied to that infrastructure. The photons or qubits will have to use the optical networks. You cannot separate the two.
NARRATOR
To learn more about quantum communications, check out episode 14 of the podcast. It’s an exciting and burgeoning innovation that promises huge benefits in network security that will benefit not just NASA, but communications technologies as a whole.
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NARRATOR
It’s been about a month since we launched LCRD and began this season of The Invisible Network. In that time, we’ve covered the profound benefits of optical communications. We’ve learned about the technologies and infrastructure that are allowing LCRD to realize them. We’ve looked to the future of NASA’s networks, one where high volumes of data flow over infrared links across the vastness of space.
On the journey, we’ve spoken with optical communications experts from across the agency. We’ve heard from engineers responsible for building the mission, architects and scientists dreaming of NASA’s internetworked future, and the leaders guiding us there.
As we conclude the season, I’d like to thank you so much for joining us on the journey. Be sure to share what you’ve learned with those around you. Together, we can make NASA’s networks a little less invisible.
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NARRATOR
Thank you for listening. Do you want to connect with us? The Invisible Network team is collecting questions about laser communications from listeners like you! We’re putting together a panel of NASA experts from across the Space Communications and Navigation community to answer your questions.
If you would like to participate, navigate over to NASA SCaN on Twitter or Facebook and ask your question using the hashtag AskSCaN. That’s @ NASA SCaN, N-A-S-A-S-C-A-N, on social media, with the hashtag AskSCaN, A-S-K-S-C-A-N.
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This LCRD-focused season of “The Invisible Network” debuted after the launch of the U.S. Space Force’s Space Test Program Satellite-6 on Dec. 7, 2021. LCRD is led by NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, in partnership with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and the MIT Lincoln Laboratory. LCRD is funded through NASA’s Technology Demonstration Missions program, part of the Space Technology Mission Directorate, and the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The podcast is produced by SCaN at Goddard with episodes written and recorded by me, Danny Baird. Editorial support provided by Katherine Schauer. Our public affairs officers are Lora Bleacher, Kathryn Hambleton, and Clare Skelly of the Space Technology Mission Directorate.
Special thanks to Barbara Adde, SCaN Policy and Strategic Communications director, and all those who have lent their time, talent and expertise to making “The Invisible Network” a reality. Be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you get your podcasts. For transcripts of the episodes, visit NASA.gov/invisible. To learn more about the vital role that space communications plays in NASA’s mission, visit NASA.gov/SCaN. And for more NASA podcast offerings, visit NASA.gov/podcasts.