For the first time, NASA has used laser communication to send 4K video from a plane to the International Space Station (ISS) and back again.

So far, NASA has relied on radio communication to send and receive messages to missions in space. While effective – we can communicate with Voyager 1, which is over 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away – by using infrared laser light it is possible to transmit 10 to 100 times more data, and faster too.

NASA is now exploring laser communication as it sets its sights on the Moon and Mars as part of its Artemis program. The hope is that the technology could be used to live-stream footage of astronauts as humanity takes its next steps on the lunar surface currently planned for 2026. 

In the test, NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland attached a portable laser terminal to the underside of a Pilatus PC-12 aircraft. Data from the aircraft was sent to an optical ground station in Cleveland, and sent via Earth-based channels White Sands Test Facility in Las Cruces, New Mexico. From there, it was beamed to NASA’s orbiting Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) platform, which relayed the signal to the ILLUMA-T (Integrated LCRD LEO User Modem and Amplifier Terminal) mounted on the ISS.

Between experiments, NASA found issues and made improvements. 

“These experiments are a tremendous accomplishment,” Dr Daniel Raible, principal investigator for the HDTN project at Glenn, said in a statement. “We can now build upon the success of streaming 4K HD videos to and from the space station to provide future capabilities, like HD videoconferencing, for our Artemis astronauts, which will be important for crew health and activity coordination.”

As well as streaming video, the project aims to make communicating with missions in space much more efficient beyond Earth orbit. Though the ILLUMA-T is no longer attached to the ISS, the team will continue to conduct tests using the Pilatus PC-12 aircraft throughout the rest of July.