A team of experts from NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland has transmitted 4K video footage from an aircraft to the International Space Station and back for the first time using optical (laser) communication. The test was part of tests of a new technology that could enable video transmission from the Moon during the Artemis missions.

Throughout the history of space missions, NASA has used radio waves to transmit information into space and back, but these are now being replaced by laser communications, which use infrared light to transmit data ten times faster than radio frequency systems.

During the latest tests of the laser communications system, engineers mounted a portable laser terminal on the fuselage of a Pilatus PC-12 aircraft. It then lifted the aircraft into the air and began transmitting data to a ground station in Cleveland. From there, the data was broadcast over a ground network to White Sands Test Range in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where scientists used infrared signals to send data to the experimental orbiter’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) platform, which relayed the signals to the satellite. The ISS received the data back and sent a signal back to Earth.