Question: What is the purpose of NASA’s recently launched LCRD mission?
a) To Study Red Dwarf
b) To locate carbon in distant stars
c) Laser Communications Relay
d) None of these
Answer: (c)
Related Facts:-
- On 07 December 2021; NASA launched its Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD).
- It also carried with itself NASA-U.S. Naval Research Laboratory space weather payload to study the Sun’s radiation.
- The payloads launched aboard the Space Test Program Satellite-6 on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.
- LCRD will demonstrate NASA’s first two-way laser relay communications system, sending and receiving data over invisible infrared lasers.
- This way of communication can enable data rates 10 to 100 times greater than radio frequency systems traditionally used by spacecraft.
- Associate administrator for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate informed that this launch has introduced an exciting new technology for space missions.
- He said that demonstrating this innovative way of communicating with spacecraft will open the door for this technology to expand the horizons of future space missions.
- The other NASA science payload that launched aboard the satellite was the Ultraviolet Spectro-Coronagraph Pathfinder (UVSC Pathfinder).
- UVSC Pathfinder is a joint experiment with the Naval Research Lab that studies the origins of solar energetic particles, the Sun’s most dangerous form of radiation.
- It has the potential to develop a new, high-impact tool with predictive capability for energetic solar particle storms that will enable future space missions, helping us explore farther and travel safer.
- NASA’s LCRD will demonstrate the benefits of space-to-ground laser communications, also called optical communications.
- LCRD will send and receive data at a rate of 1.2 gigabits per second from geosynchronous orbit to Earth.
- At such speed, one could download a movie in under a minute.
- Laser communications systems are smaller, lighter, and use less power than radio frequency systems.
- These advantages, combined with laser communications’ higher bandwidth, can advance robotic and human exploration across the solar system.