ISS crew uses laser channel to beam data

Russian astronauts onboard the ISS have transferred scientific data using a laser communication channel for the first time.

Moscow: Russian astronauts onboard the International Space Station (ISS) have transferred scientific data using a laser communication channel for the first time.

Federal space agency Roscosmos said the information was transferred through the earth`s atmosphere at a rate of 125 megabytes per second from an onboard laser terminal. The total of 400 megabytes of data included earth imagery and telemetric information. The transfer operation was part of the Laser Communication System project to exchange data between the ISS and the ground station Arkhyz in the North Caucasus. Flight engineers Oleg Novitsky, Yevgeny Tarelkin and Roman Romanenko are Russian team members of ISS Expedition 34. NASA astronaut Kevin Ford is the commander, and Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield and NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn are flight engineers. IANS