LCRD        

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Context

• Recently, NASA launched its new Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) — the agency’s first-ever laser communications system — from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida.

About

• The LCRD will help the agency test optical communication in space.
• Currently, most NASA spacecraft use radio frequency communications to send data.
• Optical communications will help increase the bandwidth 10 to 100 times more than radio frequency systems.
• LCRD has two optical terminals – one to receive data from a user spacecraft, and the other to transmit data to ground stations.
• The modems will translate the digital data into laser signals.
• This will then be transmitted via encoded beams of light.
• These capabilities make LCRD NASA’s first two-way, end-to-end optical relay.