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in science fiction a laser is commonly

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used as a cutting tool

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while the same is true for the real

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world scientists at nasa's jet

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propulsion laboratory in pasadena

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california are finding ways to use

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lasers for communications as well

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one day they might even be able to

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provide live-streamed video from mars

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jessica egan with the station's payload

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operations integration center at nasa's

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marshall space flight center in

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huntsville alabama caught up with the

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mission manager for the optical payload

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for laser com science or opel's

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experiment

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we're trying to do is transmit data over

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laser beam which is very focused as

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opposed to a radio frequency beam which

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is

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diverges quite a bit over time and

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because we have a focused laser beam we

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need a lot of data to the ground so with

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higher data rates

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we can get data moving faster and we get

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things like high definition video across

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that data stream it's very important for

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going out and exploring and getting our

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science data back to the ground

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why is the iss an ideal place for you to

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do your research

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the iss gives us a platform that's

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already existing it's an existing

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infrastructure

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you can think of

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infrastructures used today like using

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windows on a pc that's a platform the

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isis is a platform

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and that gives us a window really to

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look down at the earth and to

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demonstrate and really use this optical

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link as a test bed

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as if we're in the laboratory

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it rotates over the earth just like a

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orbiter would rotate over mars and we

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can test things out like what if a mars

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rover were to communicate with an

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orbiter in space

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we can test that out by

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communicating between the iss and earth

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orbit and a ground station on the earth

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and test out those technologies

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so you can imagine now curiosity uh the

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rover has been on mars for about a year

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now driving around

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and currently it takes minutes to almost

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hours to get just single images down

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from mars and that's just because of the

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bandwidth and having to relay all that

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data through various orbiters along the

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way

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if we have optical com

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you might be able to get streaming video

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from the surface of mars and i think

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that's a game changer in terms of

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public outreach and getting the public

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involved with mars and also science and

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getting detailed science and being able

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to react to things in real time and do

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the science a lot faster

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we're an external payload so what

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they're going to do is mount us in the

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trunk of the dragon which is on the

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underbelly we're almost upside down kind

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of like in a bat cave

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we'll launch the spacex rocket and we

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get up to the space station

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the dragon will uh

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phase the space station get within a few

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hundred meters and then

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the robotic arm comes out and grabs the

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dragon opens up the trunk just like

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you'd open up your trunk on your car

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pulls out opals and uh relays us in

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about three or four hours over to our

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elc location which is basically a pallet

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on the outside of the space station that

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points down towards the ground at that

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point we're ready to go we're ready to

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start optical communications our

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baseline mission is about 90 days and

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that's just to get one video down from

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the space station to the ground after

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that's complete we'll go into an

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extended mission where we'll start to

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try uh different passes different ground

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stations different geometries and really

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start getting to statistics on the data

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about how this optical link changes over

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time changes over different weather

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patterns and that'll really help us when

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we want to design these things in the

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future we'll have data on the ground

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we'll have statistics that are real and

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that's really important to this

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technology we have been tracking the

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space station with our telescope at

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table mountain what we do is we

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get a gps state from a gps same way you

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get it on your iphone and we use that to

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predict where the iss is going to be in

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the sky from our telescope and so we've

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tracked the iss on our telescope

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overhead

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early in the morning when uh it's it's

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dark on the ground but the iss is lit up

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by the sun so we can actually see the

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isis passing through our telescope which

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is pretty neat to see so the next time

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we'll do this when we do it for real

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we'll see a laser pointing back down at