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right now spacecraft communicate and

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send data back and forth using radio

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frequencies much like your car radio

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well the opals investigation is proving

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that it can now be done with lasers i

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caught up with matt abrahamson at the

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jet propulsion laboratory to learn why

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opals may be the gem scientists are

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looking for

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we launched up to the space station in

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april 2014

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and we're a technology demonstration

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mission for laser communications

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technology that's sending data over

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laser beams rather than radio waves why

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is that so important uh well basically a

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laser beam is much more focused than a

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radio wave so for the

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smaller amount of power that's

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transmitted you can transmit much more

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information

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it's also at a higher frequency than

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radio waves so you can pack more bits

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into that same data stream so you can

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get data rates that are 10 to 100 times

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faster than the potential for radio

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waves so we've we've practiced this a

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few times we've we've seen it in action

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how'd it work oh worked great um we got

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up there in april as i mentioned uh we

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started operating in may

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uh everything checked out as as expected

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uh went through a few checks to make

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sure we can point because one of the

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major technologies of this is to

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demonstrate that we can point within a

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few

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micro radians of the target ground

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station

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and we had our first success on june 5th

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we were able to actually transmit a high

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definition video from the space station

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on opals down to our ground station

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so how does that work with is there crew

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involvement with this or is it just

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strictly from the ground uh there's no

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crew involvement we're an external

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payload so we sit on the outside on

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express logistics carrier one and

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everything's ground commanded from jpl

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we send the commands from there they go

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over to marshall space flight center

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then to johnson space flight center to

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white sands up through tdrs all the way

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over to our payload in a matter of a few

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seconds which is uh kind of incredible

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uh so we command each step in the

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process uh to prepare for

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uh this transmission and uh during the

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actual time period of the transmission

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which is about two and a half minutes

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when we pass over the ground station

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everything's automated at that point so

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we have this closed-loop tracking over

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them that will track a ground station

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and transmit that video down to the

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ground

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it's the story of an endless search to

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serve the communications needs of

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america

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why the hurry

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so when we transmit things you

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transmitted a video are you trying to

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transmit several things at once or is it

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one at a time how does that work uh it's

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one video and we'll continuously loop it

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so there may be dropouts during the

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middle of the transmission

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typically we're transmitting 50 megabits

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per second and our standard video is

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about 175 megabits so every three and a

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half seconds you'll get a new copy of

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the video but you could have dropouts in

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the middle so we have an algorithm that

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if you do have a few packet dropouts

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when we reconstruct it on the ground you

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can take different portions of the video

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from

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different packets that were received and

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reconstruct one video now in practice

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it worked much better than expected so

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our bit error rate was so low it seemed

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like every copy we got the full copy

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there were a few instances where we hit

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clouds and if you hit a cloud with the

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laser

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you have a drop out so we did have a

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couple instances we had 10 seconds of

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drop out but we'd have enough of the

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video transmission to reconstruct a

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complete video at the end how does this

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translate to

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long-duration missions this is what

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we're

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right

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so i think this is really important for

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deep space

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from jpl's perspective we'd like to put

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one of these on a mars orbiter or even a

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mars rover

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and then that really increases the

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bandwidth of the amount of science data

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you can get back from the surface of

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mars instead of taking snapshots of

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images you could take video data and

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send that back to earth you can't do

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that right now

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it also will be a big game changer in

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terms of manned space flight

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we're going out to deep space even to

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the moon

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you want to have as much bandwidth as

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possible to talk to those astronauts and

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you're going to need laser con for that

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so what's next for opals well we're

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going to be on the station through

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february 2016. uh that's our current

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decommissioning date

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and we have a few more uh demonstrations

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that we're looking to do we just

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completed one which is an adaptive

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optics experiment

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in that experiment we took a test bed

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that would take the opal signals it was

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received at the telescope and it

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corrects all the atmospheric distortion

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that occurred as it was transmitted down

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we're able to couple that new fiber

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optics cable and that just demonstrates

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that we're able to take this signal and

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transmit to fiber optics cable possibly

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for transmission out to other ground

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stations those important technology to

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test out

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the next thing we'll be testing is a

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platform characterization experiment

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that's an attempt to try to measure the

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vibration or the shaking on the space

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station so it's not really output

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communications but based on our

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capabilities using lasers we can get

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some useful measurements out of it and

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then the fall time frame we're looking

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to do more transmissions to our foreign

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partners

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that's issa in the tenerife canary

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islands that's dlr and oberfunhoff in

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germany

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nict in tokyo japan and possibly canes

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in nice france so those will be nice

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collaboration to have before we begin

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the program in february

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so it's important to have those other

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ground stations around the world

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that's right i think both for

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collaboration

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and also looking at the variations you

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get with geometry variations

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when we operate in california the

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weather is fairly good for transmission

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of laser beams we operate in germany

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it's a little more challenging and so we

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learn new things uh it's also a much

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higher latitude in the planet and so the

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link availability and one we can

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transmit is quite a bit different from

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transmitting california and so by

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looking at those variations we're