3.5 seconds!
HD video is transmitted back to Earth from space-OPALS-IT information 3.5 seconds! HD videos back to Earth from space

Space broadband era is coming, please? United States Space Agency announced on 6th, which uses a laser beam to a HD video back to the Earth from the international space station, successfully completed a potentially radical changes for future space communications technology demonstration.

The communication test named "scientific optical laser communication load" (OPALS). According to United States Space Agency news release, 5th technical demonstration, a 37-second, known as "Hello, world! "HD video, with only 3.5 seconds, returned successfully, the equivalent transmission rates of up to 50 megabytes per second, while traditional technique requires at least 10 minutes to download (at transmission speeds up to 171 times).

According to United States Space Agency introduced OPALS by using extremely tiny laser beam to transmit data rate than existing methods based on radio communications up to 10 times to 1000 times. "It's like upgrading from dial-up Internet access to broadband Internet. "The engineer in charge of this project bogedan·wayide said.

A major challenge for the test are "extremely accurate" lock located in the United States ground station of the town of wrightwood, California. United States Space Agency said, because the space station 400 kilometres below the surface, high operating speed, this task "as 9 meters away, to walk at all times with a laser pointer to aim a hair tips".

5th technical demonstration, ground station sends a cursor laser aim first at the space station, and then locked by the OPALS system on the space station, then begin to transmit video, entire test for 148 seconds.

OPALS project manager mate·yabolahansen said in a statement, "we look forward to the coming months continue to OPALS tests, hope that we work for future deep-space exploration missions to provide optical communication capabilities. ”