Psyche

NASA’s Psyche spacecraft, farther away than the Sun, has sent data through a laser over a record-breaking distance, and done so even faster than expected. The breakthrough could help establish high-speed communications with human colonies on Mars.

In a move to make high-speed communications with deep space missions a practical reality, NASA is testing a giant hybrid dish antenna that is capable of handling both radio and laser signals across hundreds of millions of miles of space.

NASA has taken cat videos to a whole new level, with its Psyche Deep Space Optical Communications experiment beaming a 15-second high-definition clip of a playful tabby across 19 million miles (31 million km) of space to Earth.

NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) unit aboard the Psyche spacecraft has switched on, establishing a super-speed laser data link at a distance of 10 million miles (16 million km), or 40 times the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

NASA's deep-space probe to an estimated US$10-quadrillion metal-rich asteroid is on its way. The Psyche mission lifted off on October 13 at 10:19 am EDT from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

When NASA's Psyche probe launches in October on its mission to a metal asteroid as much as 309 million miles (497 million km) from Earth, it will be carrying a new laser communications system that promises to revolutionize deep space missions.

​​NASA has given its approval to begin construction of a spacecraft that will one day explore the metallic asteroid Psyche, which may represent the exposed metallic core of what was once a Mars-sized planet.

​In September 2015, NASA chose five potential space exploration missions to fund. Now the space agency has narrowed the field down to two missions that will see robotic spacecraft probing parts of our Solar System that could give us deeper insights into its formation and evolution.