Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC)

The Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment is a pioneering technology demonstration that takes laser communications to the next frontier: deep space. The DSOC transceiver launched aboard the Psyche spacecraft – NASA’s first mission to the metal-rich asteroid Psyche – to test high-bandwidth optical communications with Earth during the first two years of the spacecraft’s journey to the main asteroid belt.

With new deep space missions producing ever more data, laser-based communications offer a significant augmentation of radio frequency telecommunications, the current standard. Managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, DSOC will allow data rates at least 10 times higher than state-of-the-art radio telecommunications systems of comparable size and power, enabling higher resolution images, larger volumes of science data, and even streaming video.

The Optical Communication Telescope Laboratory (OCTL) at NASA’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California, will use a powerful modulated laser to transmit low-rate data to the transceiver (while also serving as a beacon pointing reference) during Psyche’s journey. A sensitive superconducting nanowire photon-counting receiver, also developed by JPL, installed at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California, will receive high-rate data returned by the space transceiver.

A division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, JPL manages the project for the Technology Demonstration Missions program within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and the Space Communications and Navigation program within the agency’s Space Operations Mission Directorate.