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The radio frequency band that many NASA missions use to communicate with spacecraft — S-band — is getting a bit crowded and noisy, and likely to get more [congested] as science missions demand higher and higher data rates.
A team of NASA technologists at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, just may have a solution, particularly for potential missions that plan to operate in low-Earth orbit and have limited real estate to accommodate communications gear.
Under two different research and development projects, technologists Mae Huang and Victor Marrero-Fontanez have collaborated to test and verify components of a prototype end-to-end Ka-band space communications system, which promises significantly higher data rates — a whopping 2.4 gigabits of data per second (Gbps) — over more traditional S-band systems, which theoretically could achieve data rates of 90 megabits of data per second (Mbps).
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2015-02/nsfc-ntd021715.php
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 19 2015, @09:29PM
On a product I used to write software for we used Ka band for data. The truck drivers would say 'ill just put a bucket over it'. We would tell them 'only if you do not mind never having children and probably cancer'. :) And yes it worked pretty good in the rain. Not so much with an inch of plastic/metal/fiberglass in the way...