NASA will hold a media teleconference at 1 p.m. EST Tuesday, Nov. 16, to discuss the agencys upcoming laser communications technology demonstration.
Audio of the teleconference will livestream on NASAswebsite.
The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) will be NASAs first end-to-end laser relay system, sending and receivingdata over invisible infrared lasersat a rate of 1.2 gigabits per secondfromgeosynchronous orbitto Earth. With data rates 10 to 100 times higher than traditional radio frequency systems, laser communications systems will provide future missions with extraordinary data capabilities.
Participants will discuss the benefits of the technology, demonstration objectives, and deep-space systems in development.
The briefing participants are:
- Trudy Kortes, director of technology demonstrations, NASAs Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD)
- Badri Younes, deputy associate administrator, NASAs Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program
- Dave Israel, LCRD principal investigator, NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland
- MiriamWennersten, LCRD ground segment manager, Goddard
- Abi Biswas, deep space optical communications technologist and group supervisor of the Optical Communications groupat NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California
