While most of us in the Tri-Community look up at the night sky to admire the stars, a dedicated team of engineers at the JPL Table Mountain Facility (TMF) in Wrightwood has spent the last two years firing back at them—with lasers.
Since October 2023, our local mountain top has played a starring role in NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment. Hitching a ride on the Psyche spacecraft, this mission wasn’t just about exploring an asteroid; it was about proving that we can “stream” data from deep space just like we stream movies at home.
By using lasers instead of traditional radio waves, the mission achieved speeds nearly 100 times faster than current deep-space tech. To celebrate, they even beamed down a high-definition video of a cat named Taters—the first of its kind.
Abhijit Biswas, the Group Supervisor for the Optical Communications Group at Table Mountain, was kind enough to give us a “behind the scenes” look at how this history-making mission felt from our own backyard.
Operating a precision laser at 7,500 feet comes with unique challenges, especially when the “target” is moving millions of miles away. With 65 passes completed over the two year project, braving the elements definitely opened the possibility for atmospheric turbulence to cause disturbances and the potential for a “break” in the link. Biswas recalled a particularly tough night in December 2024 “The atmospheric turbulence was severe and further aggravated by winds; the link was choppy, but it did not fail entirely. This is the worst case that I recall.” To fight through our mountain’s unpredictable air, the team used a clever trick called “multi-beaming,” firing eight different lasers at once. “Each traverses a diverse atmospheric path… There is an averaging effect that reduces the atmosphere-induced fluctuations,” he explained.
The precision required is mind-boggling. By the end of the mission, the team achieved a record-breaking connection from 307 million miles away. Even at that distance, the laser beam has to be perfectly aimed.”By the end of the first year, July 2024, we reached stability performance that was optimal,” Biswas noted. He shared a staggering statistic: by the time that laser beam reaches the spacecraft from Earth, it has spread out to be about 4,300 miles wide—roughly half the diameter of the Earth.
While the DSOC mission wrapped up in September 2025, the Psyche spacecraft is currently heading toward a Mars flyby in May 2026. While there aren’t official plans to fire the laser daily right now, the hardware is tucked away safely. “It is powered down, but the Psyche spacecraft has heaters that keep the hardware within allowable flight temperatures,” said Biswas.
As for the future of our local facility, the legacy of Table Mountain is only growing. The lessons learned right here in the Tri-Community are being used for Artemis II, the mission that will send humans back around the Moon. “Table Mountain Facility has many historical firsts related to lasers, including bouncing laser light from the Apollo retro-reflectors,” Biswas said. “The signaling scheme demonstrated for DSOC was inherited by and is being used for Artemis II. Most of the engineers who developed and demonstrated DSOC are also working on Artemis II, so there is a lot of synergy.”
So, the next time you see a faint glow or a strange light coming from the ridge above Wrightwood, know that our neighbors are doing more than just watching the stars—they’re building the “interplanetary internet” that will one day connect us to the rest of the solar system.
