The Integrity Artemis II space capsule has begun a four-day journey to orbit the moon, and it will make various observations of our natural satellite, and will record many high-resolution videos.
NASA has confirmed that the space capsule will use laser beam-based data transmission technology from the space capsule, which comes with a data transmission speed of 260Mbps to send live 4K resolution video recordings directly to them.
This data transmission technology, called the Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O), is developed based on the Deep Space Optical Communication laser communication technology that has been successfully used to send and receive data from the Psyche spacecraft sent to orbit the planet Mars and has covered a distance of 226 million kilometers.
This O2O data transmission technology will also be used for other purposes such as sending and receiving procedures, pictures, flight plans and others.
Video recording will be done using a Nikon D5 digital camera while other recording equipment such as an Apple iPhone 17 Pro and a GoPro digital camera will also be used as secondary recording devices.
Meanwhile, the ground laser stations that will receive the laser data transmission are located in Las Cruces, New Mexico and Table Mountain, California. These locations were chosen because the skies are always clear, which is an important factor for fast laser communication.
One drawback of this O2O system is that when the Artemis II capsule orbits the back of the moon, it will prevent any laser communication between the capsule and the ground laser station for 41 minutes. As a precaution, the ship has also been loaded with a radio communication system in case anything happens to the O2O laser communication system.
