Opals Lasercomm To Be Added To Iss

NASA Public Affairs Officer Lori Meggs talks with OPALS PROJECT Systems Engineer Bogdan Oaida from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. OPALS, short for Optical PAyload for Lasercomm Science, looks at using lasers to transmit data from the International Space Station at much higher data rates than what is possible currently with radio-frequency transmissions. The Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS), an optical technology demonstration experiment, could improve NASA's data rates for communications with future spacecraft by a factor of 10 to 100. OPALS has arrived at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida from the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. It is scheduled to launch to the space station later this year aboard a SpaceX Dragon commercial resupply capsule (CRS-3) on the company's Falcon 9 rocket. MORE FROM NASA.

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