NASA Laser Communication System Sets Record with Data Transmissions to and from Moon

NASA's Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) has made history using a pulsed laser beam to transmit data over the 239,000 miles between the moon and Earth at a record-breaking download rate of 622 megabits per second (Mbps).

LLCD is NASA's first system for two-way communication using a laser instead of radio waves. It also has demonstrated an error-free data upload rate of 20 Mbps transmitted from the primary ground station in New Mexico to the spacecraft currently orbiting the moon.

"LLCD is the first step on our roadmap toward building the next generation of space communication capability," said Badri Younes, NASA's deputy associate administrator for space communications and navigation (SCaN) in Washington. "We are encouraged by the results of the demonstration to this point, and we are confident we are on the right path to introduce this new capability into operational service soon."

Since NASA first ventured into space, it has relied on radio frequency (RF) communication. However, RF is reaching its limit as demand for more data capacity continues to increase. The development and deployment of laser communications will enable NASA to extend communication capabilities such as increased image resolution and 3-D video transmission from deep space.

"The goal of LLCD is to validate and build confidence in this technology so that future missions will consider using it," said Don Cornwell, LLCD manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. "This unique ability developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Lincoln Laboratory has incredible application possibilities."

LLCD is a short-duration experiment and the precursor to NASA's long-duration demonstration, the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD). LCRD is a part of the agency's Technology Demonstration Missions Program, which is working to develop crosscutting technology capable of operating in the rigors of space. It is scheduled to launch in 2017.

LLCD is hosted aboard NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), launched in September from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Wallops Island, Va. LADEE is a 100-day robotic mission operated by the agency's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif. LADEE's mission is to provide data that will help NASA determine whether dust caused the mysterious glow astronauts observed on the lunar horizon during several Apollo missions. It also will explore the moon's atmosphere. Ames designed, developed, built, integrated and tested LADEE, and manages overall operations of the spacecraft. NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington funds the LADEE mission.

The LLCD system, flight terminal and primary ground terminal at NASA's White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, N.M., were developed by the Lincoln Laboratory at MIT. The Table Mountain Optical Communications Technology Laboratory operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., is participating in the demonstration. A third ground station operated by the European Space Agency on Tenerife in the Canary Islands also will be participating in the demonstration.

For more information about LLCD, visit:

http://llcd.gsfc.nasa.gov

For more information about the LADEE mission, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ladee

For more information about LCRD, visit:

http://esc.gsfc.nasa.gov/267/LCRD.html

For more information about SCaN, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/scan

-end-

View the original article here

Broad-Based S.&P. 500-Stock Index Ends at Record High

The nominal record set by the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index is the latest sign that the American economy is recovering some of the strength it had before the financial collapse of 2008, partly helped by stimulus from the Federal Reserve.

It has been a little more than three weeks since the Dow Jones industrial average hit a milestone high, also set in October 2007, but the S.& P. is considered more representative of the breadth of American stocks.

The S.& P. reached its new nominal high after several days of flirting with the record as investors struggled with the turmoil caused by Cyprus’s banking crisis. The milestone capped a strong first quarter, in which the index rose 10 percent to hit the high.

Meanwhile, stock markets in nearly every other large economy around the world are still well below their records. An index of the entire world’s stock market, without the United States, is still down about 29 percent from the level it hit in 2007, according to an analysis by Ned Davis Research. Only some smaller nations, such as Denmark, Mexico and Colombia, have fully recovered their losses.

Workers in the United States have learned that the stock market’s performance is not always a good gauge of the underlying economy’s strength. Unemployment in the United States has remained stubbornly high at the same time that share prices have risen since bottoming out in March 2009. Even with the record level, the S.& P. 500 is still not back to its 2007 level when inflation is taken into account.

Still, the performance of the American stock market would have seemed improbable during the depths of the crisis, given that it was financial markets in the United States that led the global economy into recession. Strategists and economists have said that the divergence since then is largely a result of the relative speed with which the United States government and corporate sector responded to the causes of the 2008 crisis.

“The U.S. addressed the problems of the financial crisis faster and with much more ferocity than the rest of the world,” said Edward M. Clissold, a market strategist at Ned Davis Research.

The S.& P. 500 finished Thursday up 0.4 percent, or 6.34 points, at 1,569.19. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed 0.4 percent, or 52.38 points, to 14,578.54. That is 11 percent above its level at the beginning of the quarter.

The Nasdaq composite index rose 0.3 percent, or 11 points to 3,267.52, far below the heights it reached during the dot-com boom in 2000.

Economists have given much of the credit for the market’s recovery to the Fed, which worked quickly with the rest of the federal government to bail out and revamp the nation’s banks and financial system, which the European Central Bank started doing in earnest only last year. While bank bailouts remain contentious, they have allowed the institutions to resume lending.

The Fed also acted on its own to pump money into the economy with bond-buying programs known as quantitative easing. Many central bankers around the world worried that those programs would result in extreme inflation. There are also fears that the American economy will not be able to remain on its current trajectory once the Fed draws back. But all that has not stopped other countries from beginning to copy the Fed’s lead.

“The Fed has won the battle, and continues to win the battle,” said Jack Malvey, the chief global markets strategist at BNY Mellon.

In Japan, the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was elected last December after promising a more aggressive approach to monetary policy. Japan’s Nikkei index has been the best performer of any of the world’s large stock markets in the first quarter of this year, rising 19 percent. That still leaves the Nikkei almost 68 percent below the heights it scaled in 1989 before Japan’s real estate market soured.

View the original article here