The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) recently received a laser beam message from 16 million kilometre deep space. The independent agency of the US Federal Government responsible for the civil space programme, aeronautics and space research has said in a statement that the distance from which the message has been received is 40 times greater than the distance between the Earth and the Moon. According to the statement, this is the message received from the longest distance in World History!

No, aliens did not send this message. Instead, NASA has received the message from a spaceship. The US Space Research Organisation has revealed that the entire thing has been made possible with the help of a device installed in the Psyche spacecraft sent by it. The device is called Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC). NASA launched the spacecraft on October 13, 2023 from the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida and it successfully sent the laser message to the Earth on November 14, 2023. The statement has mentioned that the Psyche communicated with the Hale Telescope at the Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, California. During the experiment, the near-infrared photons from DSOC took just 50 seconds to travel from the spacecraft to the Earth!

Senior NASA official Trudy Cortes has informed the media that the laser message sent by DSOC from such a distance has set a new milestone. Cortes, the Project Technologist of DSOC at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has stressed: “Achieving first light in the coming months toward high-data-rate communications capable of transmitting scientific information, high-definition images and streaming video is one of several important DSOC milestones in the coming months: sending humans to Mars.”

Cortes has claimed that the primary objective of the spacecraft is to reach and conduct experiments on the Psyche, a giant metal-rich asteroid that is about three times farther away of the distance between the Sun and the Earth. The asteroid has an irregular, potato-like shape. The spacecraft is supposed to repeatedly send laser signals to the Earth on its way to the asteroid. It is expected to reach Psyche, situated between Mars and Jupiter, in 2029. It may be noted that Italian astronomer Annibale de Gasparis (November 9, 1819 – March 21, 1892) had discovered the asteroid on March 17, 1852. The asteroid is named after the Greek goddess, Psyche. Psyche is one of the largest asteroids ever discovered in the universe as its average diameter is about 220km.

The material value of this asteroid is quite high because it is made of iron and nickel. A group of scientists has claimed that several parts of this asteroid are made of gold. They have estimated that the value of Psyche is about USD 10,000 Quadrillion as per the current market rate in the US. Interestingly, the current value of the world economy is USD 74 trillion. It means that if any country manages to get hold of this precious asteroid, it would have the power to completely destroy the World Economy.

NASA believes that the iron and nickel concentrations in Psyche are higher than those found on the Earth. The US space research agency had planned to send a spaceship to this asteroid for a long time. Finally, it sent the spacecraft in October 2023. Bill Nelson, the NASA Administrator, has stated: “The Psyche Mission could provide humanity with new information about planet formation while testing technology that can be used on future NASA missions. As Asteroid Autumn continues, so does NASA’s commitment to exploring the unknown and inspiring the world through discovery.“

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das