NASA/JPL-Caltech.

The Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) transceiver is inside a large tube-like sunshade and telescope on the Psyche spacecraft, here inside a clean room at JPL. An earlier photo, inset, shows the DSOC before it was integrated with the spacecraft.

The ASU-led Psyche mission will serve as a testbed for a new communications technology that could multiply data speeds 10- to 100-fold over current radio systems, which NASA has used for more than half a century.

The boost would help NASA deal with ever-expanding data needs posed by an expanding slate of missions. It would also help overcome the higher data demands imposed by increasing use of high-definition images and video, especially in future missions to Mars.

Think of Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) as NASA’s leap from dial-up to broadband — a more tightly packed train of near-infrared laser pulses that swap data as Earth and Psyche whiz through space hundreds of millions of miles apart.

To deal with the colossal, ever-changing lag and whisper-weak signal strength, NASA is testing new signal-processing methods and tools, such as a photon-counting camera attached to the Psyche craft with vibration-dampeners.

That camera will need to lock onto a powerful uplink laser shone spaceward by the Optical Communication Telescope Laboratory at JPL’s Table Mountain Facility near Wrightwood, California.

It will then locate the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, which will handle data downloads using a cryogenically cooled superconducting nanowire that can detect single photons and clock their arrival times.

Nanowires are extremely thin, long structures measuring hundreds to thousands of times smaller than a human hair. Their high surface-to-volume ratio, special manufacturing techniques and greater sensitivity to quantum effects make them useful in sensors, electronics and applications involving the generation, manipulation, transmission and detection of light.

Peter Rubin/ASU

An artist's conception of what (16) Psyche might look like.

DSOCs’ testing will continue for nearly two years after Psyche launches in October, while the craft is en route to its 2026 Mars flyby. There, Psyche will use Mars’ gravity for a low-propellant speed boost and course change.

Following its 2029 arrival, the robotic craft will orbit and study (16) Psyche, one of only nine known iron-nickel asteroids, for 26 months. There, using instruments built by ASU, Applied Physics Laboratory, a consortium between MIT and UCLA and others, the craft will map the asteroid’s features, structure, composition and magnetic field.

The Psyche mission will not use the tech demo to relay its mission data.