Top
Best
New

Posted by speckx 6 hours ago

Artemis II will use laser beams to live-stream 4K moon footage at 260 Mbps(www.tomshardware.com)
246 points | 107 commentspage 2
jascenso 4 hours ago|
260 Mbps for 4K seems to be awfully a lot for a single stream. Really makes me wonder what has been used for compression ...
rumblefrog 57 minutes ago||
That number is the total bandwidth for the O2O link.
dawnerd 3 hours ago||
Almost for sure would be multiple camera feeds. But also wouldn’t be unreasonable to have a bitrate that high. I had a Sony camera that did 100mbps and that was just a prosumer camera.
hedgehog 1 hour ago||
For the raw footage of something with as much contrast as the moon against a backdrop of space it would make sense to use a format like ProRes that preserves more dynamic range.
danny_codes 3 hours ago||
Hopefully it’s not cloudy
brcmthrowaway 5 hours ago||
How does laser communication work with a moving object with 9DoF?!
sbarre 5 hours ago||
Apparently with a gimbal and some fast-moving mirrors.

https://www.ll.mit.edu/news/lincoln-laboratory-laser-communi...

beloch 4 hours ago||
It also helps that laser beams diverge. By the time it gets back to Earth, the diameter of the beam from Artemis is probably several hundred meters, if not several kilometres. Their aim still needs to be fairly precise, but they're not trying to hit a lens with a beam that's still the width of a pencil. They really just need to paint the neighbourhood that NASA's sensors are located in.
groby_b 3 hours ago||
6 km ([slide show](https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20250009875/downloads/Op...) with data points and the worst slides government agencies were able to create)
functional_dev 2 hours ago|||
I was wondering about this too! I did not know how they can aim a laser from so far at a moving spaceship.

I generated this visual map about to help me understand it - https://vectree.io/c/aiming-space-lasers-gimbals-and-beam-di...

kotaKat 5 hours ago||
Just like this, a Starlink gimbal being tested for future third party laser comms: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpFfC9WY0qs
ck2 3 hours ago||
Didn't Nokia put a 4G cell node up there?

Who is going to be the first to make a smartphone call from the moon?

Lag won't be too bad, just 1.5 seconds or less

BenjiWiebe 3 hours ago|
2.2-2.7 seconds of delay due to light speed alone (so maybe a few ms more for electronics and en/decoding).
ethanmacavoy 4 hours ago||
the writeup is helpful but i'd want to see how it handles edge cases
yardie 5 hours ago||
A reminder that the illegal DOGE took a chainsaw to NASA personnel last year. If you're disappointed that the feed update wasn't as polished as a SpaceX launch it's because the later has an actual communications and marketing department with a budget.
sentientslug 5 hours ago||
I really don’t think budget cuts prevented the camera operator from panning up at the right time…
bisby 5 hours ago|||
There are plenty of ways that money could have solved this though.

More thorough prep/training for camera operators, so they can pan the camera according to a plan, instead of by reaction.

Maybe this camera operator wasn't supposed to pan because it was trying to capture diagnostic imagery that wasn't really intended for viewers, but because of budget cuts, they opted to use diagnostic views as presentation views.

Maybe there was supposed to be a cut to a different camera. But the production room was not sufficiently staffed to coordinate the switch.

Maybe there was no broadcast plan at all and it wasn't clearly coordinated who should be taking what shots.

Maybe they were underpaying the operators and they were not qualified.

Maybe they were underpaying the operators and a single operator was stuck operating multiple cameras and was framing a different camera at the time.

Automated tracking systems.

Sure, it's very likely that this might have happened anyway, but there are a lot of ways that reducing budget reduces planning and coordination. Especially if there is enough budget squeeze to move funds from public support campaigns (this entire stream was a public support campaign) to critical things (like building a rocket).

quentindanjou 5 hours ago||||
Less budget = less tooling + less competant people

So actually, yes, it could have affected it. Did it really? We will never know.

Also NASA has less experience in this than SpaceX, hopefully it will be better next time!

yardie 5 hours ago||||
> panning up at the right time…

I've watched hours of athlete parents try to track their athlete kid and it's marginally useful at best. Lots of shaky cam even at Pop Warner football speeds. So panning at the right time, with the muscle control to keep the object centered, is harder than you think.

If they have a professional videographer on staff working that camera it almost certainly would have never happened. Elon, who was in charge of DOGE, didn't take communications and marketing seriously so I'm almost certain they were one of the first to be let go.

PKop 4 hours ago|||
SpaceX coverage is much better! lol This is such nonsense. How much does a professional videographer cost? It's a rounding error given what they spend. It's just bad planning and decision-making. This is a damn mission to the moon, not little league baseball, why would you ever compare the two?
tredre3 3 hours ago|||
You've made it very clear that you hate Elon and DOGE, but what you have not made very clear is what are your sources to say that:

- No professional videographer was part of the staff?

- They were fired/cut by DOGE on behalf of Elon Musk?

Absent any other evidence, wouldn't it make more sense to simply assume that there was at least one professional videographer on staff, and an entire professional video team, but they just weren't very good/effective for a variety of reasons unrelated to Elon Musk?

reaperducer 5 hours ago||||
I really don’t think budget cuts prevented the camera operator from panning up at the right time

Tilting is up and down.

Panning is left to right.

You can't pan up, unless you've fallen over.

dboreham 5 hours ago|||
Presumably they had more than one camera and the fault was with people in the booth.
adamsb6 42 minutes ago|||
Jared could have reached out to Everyday Astronaut and probably gotten his crew to do it just for the shoutouts on the official stream.
lysace 5 hours ago|||
I remember NASA broadcasts being top notch up until the end of the Space Shuttle program in 2011. That stabilized footage from when the shuttle was landing is iconic.

However: That quality was lost earlier than last year. Not sure exactly when, but it been like this for years now.

PKop 4 hours ago||
This is nonsense excuse making. Regardless of how much money you want NASA to have, are you not yourself upset that the billions they do get were not sufficient to use cameras correctly? How much money do you think it costs to do this right?
chmorgan_ 3 hours ago||
[dead]
scottburgess33 3 hours ago|
[dead]