DSOC Flight Laser Transceiver Integrated with NASA’s Psyche Spacecraft

People in cleanroom suits gather around NASA's Psyche spacecraft inside a facility at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory ahead of its journey to a metal-rich asteroid. Visible on the side of the foil-wrapped probe is a distinctive silver cylindrical sunshade — the heart of the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) flight laser transceiver. As NASA's first demonstration of optical communications beyond the Earth-Moon system, DSOC uses a near-infrared laser to send high-rate data back to Earth while receiving ground-transmitted signals with an ultra-sensitive photon-counting camera. Traveling aboard Psyche, this pioneering tech demo paves the way for higher-bandwidth data streaming across the solar system.