NASA‘s TeraByte InfraRed Delivery laser communications payload has demonstrated its ability to transmit data from satellite in orbit to a ground system at a rate of 200 gigabits per second, surpassing its previous 100 Gbps milestone achieved in June 2022.
TBIRD, which operates on the Terran Orbital-designed Pathfinder Technology Generator 3 satellite, allows the transmission of multiple terabytes of test data from space to Earth during just a six-minute pass over a ground facility, NASA said Thursday.
Beth Keer, the mission manager for TBIRD at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, said the milestone “will change the way we communicate in space.”
“Laser communications is the missing link that will enable the science discoveries of the future,” she said.
The TBIRD payload was launched into space as part of NASA’s PTD-3 mission to demonstrate a direct-to-Earth laser communication link.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory designed and developed the payload in collaboration with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.