🚀 Our Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) is space-bound! Today at 5:19 AM EST (10:19 UTC), LCRD launched on a ULALaunch Atlas V rocket from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida as part of the SpaceForceDOD Space Test Program 3 mission. LCRD will showcase the unique capabilities of optical communications which increases bandwidth for communicating data in space while reducing size, weight, and power requirements. Laser communications – also called optical communications because of the use of infrared light to send information – offers higher data rates than traditional radio frequency systems, enabling more data to be sent with each transmission. This new way of communicating with spacecraft could expand the possibilities of what we could learn from future missions across the solar system. Once operational in geosynchronous orbit – about 22,000 miles above Earth – LCRD will demonstrate space-to-ground laser communications linking ground stations in Hawaii ...