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A comment on A Laser Message from Space. Parent comment

Re:A Laser Message from Space by icw on Monday June 23, 2014 @11:30AM (#7932460)
Can't speak for S-band, but Ku-band data rates are 25 Mbps Earth-to-ISS and 300 Mbps ISS-to-Earth, which is the maximum supported by TDRSS Ku-band links. Data rates may drop a bit depending on the individual satellite involved, configuration, etc.
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[deleted]
Re:A Laser Message from Space by icw on Monday June 23, 2014 @11:54AM (#7932603)
Pretty much - call that antenna gain, it's much cheaper to put bigger and better hardware on the ground. Recall though that the signal still goes through a TDRSS satellite, which also has a bigger dish.
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Re:A Laser Message from Space by dm2 on Monday June 23, 2014 @12:07PM (#7932692)
unrelated to the ISS but might be interesting to some people http://eyes.nasa.gov/dsn/dsn.html

The fact that we can talk to something 15 billion km away is mind-blowing.

It makes light (at 1 billion km per hour) seem slow.

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Re:A Laser Message from Space by toomuchtodo on Monday June 23, 2014 @12:16PM (#7932737)
More mindblowing? I, Joe Sixpack, can see the current Deep Space Network status overview (your URL) from my bedroom whilst in my underwear. Science!
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