Broadband speeds that are just out of this world

A broadband speed of 6 Mbps may not be earth shattering, but it is currently the speed of the International Space Station’s (ISS) broadband connection to the internet.  In fact, communications with satellites near Mars run at the same speed.

In about another four years, the ISS will be truly getting an out of this world speed of 100 Mbps.  And a year or two later new satellites may approach Mars to take pictures and send off the 2 Gigabit snapshots back to Earth in a fraction of the time it now takes.

Right now, it takes 90 minutes to transmit a single picture from Martian satellites (Clarification: United States satellites near Mars, should you begin to worry about me).  In the future it will take just five minutes!

How will they do it?  I’d like to say by the magic of smoke and mirrors, but it will be done by lasers developed by NASA.

Communication lasers are nothing new.  Making them powerful enough to transmit data through space and from the Earth to space is.

Currently radio waves are used for communications with the ISS, satellites and robotic vehicles dropped on planets for scientists to play with.  The new lasers will consume a lot less power to transmit the same amount of data than the radios do.

Just imagine: the scientists aboard the ISS will have a better YouTube experience with the lasercom broadband service.