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.

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.