Nasa receives signal from space as deep as 140m miles

US space agency Nasa revealed that it has received a rare signal transmission from its spacecraft Psyche as the probe was sent to collect data about deep space rocks equipped with the Deep Space Optical Communications, (DSOC).

"We downlinked about 10 minutes of duplicated spacecraft data during a pass on April 8," Meera Srinivasan, the project's operations lead at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, said in a statement.

The Nasa spacecraft's distance is 1.5 times that of between the Sun and Earth. The administration said that this development could help future missions to Mars.

"This achievement provides a glimpse into how spacecraft could use optical communications in the future, enabling higher-data-rate communications of complex scientific information as well as high-definition imagery and video in support of humanity's next giant leap: sending humans to Mars," Nasa noted.

Srinivasan said: "Until then, we'd been sending test and diagnostic data in our downlinks from Psyche. This represents a significant milestone for the project by showing how optical communications can interface with a spacecraft's radio frequency comms system."

The experts commenced the experience when the Psyche was 19 million miles away in December last year.

According to a Daily Mail report, during the latest test, the spacecraft transmitted data at a rate of 25 megabits per second.

Ken Andrews, project flight operations lead at JPL, said: "It was a small amount of data downlinked over a short time frame, but the fact we're doing this now has surpassed all of our expectations."

Nasa added: "This will better enable future human and robotic exploration missions, along with supporting higher-resolution science instruments."