Nasa smashes deep space laser record paving the way for humans to land on Mars in the 2030s
NASA is celebrating an out-of-this-world milestone that may help land humans on Mars for the first time in the 2030s.
The US space agency is racing to send astronauts to the Red Planet as China advances with its own mega plans.
As part of the huge effort, Nasa will need to be able to communicate with astronauts in the deepest depths of our solar system and send huge amounts of data.
Experts managed to send a signal to spacecraft out in space using laser communications further than ever before.
Laser signals were pinged to Nasa’s Psyche spacecraft, which is currently on a mission to a unique metal-rich asteroid.
The signal travelled a whooping 290million miles, setting a new record.
That’s about the distance from Earth to Mars when it’s at its furthest.
Lasers are particularly desirable for future hopes of reaching Mars, as it can send important data at rates up to 100 times higher than radio frequencies.
This means more complex scientific discoveries can be beamed across, along with mind-blowing HD images and videos.
“The milestone is significant,” said Meera Srinivasan, from Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
“Laser communication requires a very high level of precision, and before we launched with Psyche, we didn’t know how much performance degradation we would see at our farthest distances.
“Now the techniques we use to track and point have been verified, confirming that optical communications can be a robust and transformative way to explore the solar system.”
Nasa Administrator Bill Nelson added: “Congrats, team. This extraordinary achievement will transform the way we explore the solar system.”
The US space agency is up against China who also has its eyes set on the Red Planet.
China recently announced that it will launch a historic sample mission around 2028, bring precious rocks from Mars back to Earth.
The country is planning to land its own astronauts on Mars by 2033.
ANALYSIS: Are we in a new space race?
By Millie Turner, Senior Technology & Science Reporter
Visions of humans on the Moon once more has sparked a renaissance for the space race of the 1960s.
While China has replaced the Soviet Union in this iteration, it is once again the US going toe-to-toe with whichever global superpower is brazen enough for the challenge.
The pair are already locked into an Earth-bound tech war, with fist-shaking over computer chips, AI and TikTok, which has somehow erupted into a race for the stars.
Nasa boss Bill Nelson hasn’t shied away from calling it a “race”, either.
Under President Xi Jinping, China spent roughly $14billion (11.2billion) on its ambitious space programme in 2023, according to Statista.
The US space agency has dominated the industry so far, though has only recently swallowed the bitter pill of scrapping the Viper Moon mission after $450million had already been spent, citing spiralling costs and delays.
Nasa’s own Mars Sample Return has also been subject to pushbacks, as the mission timeline falls back into the 2040s from its original 2028 launch date.
China’s knack for building things fast, and well, could tip the scales – effects of which we might be seeing in real-time, as the country looks set to beat Nasa to Mars.
Though I have no doubt that date will be revised at some point in the future.