OPALS lasercomm instrument is unpacked from the Dragon spacecraft by a robotic arm.

 

 

Transmitido en directo el 01/05/2014

Watch live from the International Space Station as JPL’s OPALS lasercomm instrument is unpacked from the Dragon spacecraft by a robotic arm.

OPALS, the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science, is a technology demonstration that will beam HD video from space to Earth via laser light.

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OPALS will demonstrate optical communication by transferring a video from our payload on the International Space Station (ISS) to our ground receiver at JPL’s Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory (OCTL) in Wrightwood, California. As the ISS travels across the sky, a laser beacon will be transmitted from the ground telescope to our payload and tracked. While maintaining lock on the uplink beacon using a closed loop control system and a two-axis gimbal, the OPALS flight system will downlink a modulated laser beam with a formatted video. Each demonstration lasts for approximately 100 seconds as the ISS payload and ground telescope maintain line of sight.

For more info on OPALS, visithttp://phaeton.jpl.nasa.gov/external/…

 

Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory