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How Artemis II livestreamed hi-def videos and images from the moon to Earth
How Artemis II livestreamed hi-def videos and images from the moon to Earth
This first use of laser communications on a crewed mission at lunar distance was a foundational step to establishing a high-speed internet in deep space.
Ariana Gaines<br>MIT Lincoln Laboratory
Publication Date:
June 5, 2026
Press Inquiries
Press Contact:
Ariana
Gaines
Email:<br>ariana.tantillo@ll.mit.edu
Phone:<br>339-223-4847
MIT Lincoln Laboratory
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Caption:
A laser communications system on board Orion beamed down to Earth this "Earthset" photo of Earth setting behind the moon on April 6. The dark portion of Earth is in nighttime; on the daytime side, clouds swirl over Australia and Oceania.
Credits:
Photo courtesy of NASA.
Caption:
From the NASA Mission Control Center in Houston, Texas, Olga Mikulina and Jesse Chang (from left, foreground) support O2O operations during the Artemis II mission.
Credits:
Photo courtesy of NASA.
Caption:
The Artemis II Orion spacecraft hosted O2O (inset photo), which laser-beamed videos, photos, scientific data, flight procedures, and voice communications from the moon to Earth.
Credits:
Photo courtesy of NASA.
Previous image<br>Next image
This April, humanity had front-row seats to space as the Artemis II Orion spacecraft transmitted crystal-clear footage of its historic journey around the moon over more than 250,000 miles back to Earth at speeds on par with those of home internet connections.<br>The livestreaming of high-definition videos and high-resolution photos of the moon and Earth was made possible through the Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System (O2O). Developed by MIT Lincoln Laboratory in collaboration with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, the onboard O2O payload was the space end of a high-speed laser communications (lasercom) link.<br>This link reached Earth when Orion had a line of sight with primary optical ground stations located at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico and Caltech/NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Table Mountain Facility in California, or an experimental ground station at Australian National University’s Mount Stromlo Observatory.<br>Together with terrestrial networks, O2O formed an internet backbone between the Artemis II Orion spacecraft and the Mission Control Center at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Texas.<br>Toward a high-speed internet in space<br>"Our goal was to demonstrate O2O's operational utility for human spaceflight, extending the high-bandwidth connections that internet users enjoy on Earth to astronauts in deep space," says lead systems engineer Farzana Khatri, a senior staff member in Lincoln Laboratory's Optical and Quantum Communications Group. "We not only demonstrated the first use of lasercom on a crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit, but also attracted massive public engagement as the astronauts shared multimedia from their journey in near-real time."<br>During the last missions to the moon in the late 1960s and early '70s, astronauts relied on radio-frequency systems to communicate. But radio waves can only carry so much data per second because of their low carrier frequency; the grainy, poor-quality video and images of the moon from that time speak to this limited bandwidth.<br>With its much higher carrier frequency, infrared laser light can transmit 10 to 100 times more data per second than can radio waves. The switch from Apollo-era radios to Artemis-era lasers is analogous to the move from dial-up to high-speed internet. And a high-speed internet is rapidly becoming a key requirement for NASA missions as they collect more high-resolution data and push humans farther into deep space.<br>Lasering in on unprecedented views<br>During the Artemis II mission, from April 1 to 11, O2O downlinked nearly half a terabyte of data at speeds up to 260 megabits per second....