Published on: 2026-08-29
Source: People’s Republic of China — Translation
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Beijing, August 29 /Xinhua/ — Researchers have completed testing laser communication between the Earth and the Moon, successfully confirming the possibility of two-way high-speed laser communication between the two celestial bodies in orbit, the Engineering and Technical Center for Space Utilization (CSU) under the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) reported on Friday.
After conducting tests in orbit for over a year, the research team managed to establish a two-way laser communication channel between Earth and the Moon over a distance of more than 400,000 km, marking the extension of China’s space laser communication beyond near-Earth orbit into deep space.
Laser communication, compared to traditional microwave communication, is characterized by higher speed, greater bandwidth, a higher level of security, and more compact equipment. However, to establish laser communication over the distance from the Earth to the Moon, it is first necessary to overcome three main challenges: beam alignment, weak signal, and data transmission speed.
“The connection between the Earth and the Moon is like threading a needle across a distance of a thousand miles,” noted team leader Yan Lei. According to him, given the enormous distance, even minor fluctuations of the satellite or turbulence in the Earth’s atmosphere can cause shifts in the laser beams, and the slightest angular deviation over such a distance to the Moon can result in a miss on the scale of a kilometer.
The team developed an innovative data collection and tracking scheme that takes into account corrections for delays associated with orbit, atmosphere, and optical signal propagation, enabling ground and space equipment to maintain precise alignment during movement.
After traveling 400,000 km on the return path to Earth, the laser signal becomes so weak that ground-based telescopes receive only a few photons at a time, while moonlight, starlight, and city lights add additional noise — it’s like hearing the sound of a pin dropping in a busy market, said CSU.
Researchers have developed a high-speed superconducting single-photon detection technology and highly sensitive algorithms to extract reliable communication signals from background noise.
Lower transmission speed is another bottleneck, which the team overcame by developing a high-throughput signal processing technology and applying special coding schemes to suppress noise. During testing, a bidirectional communication speed of 1.25 Mbps on the uplink and 100 Mbps on the downlink was achieved.
With the inclusion of manned landings on the Moon and the construction of a lunar research station as part of lunar exploration, an enormous volume of images and scientific data is expected to be generated, which the traditional communication system is unlikely to handle. The laser “information highway” Earth–Moon will provide a new high-speed data transmission route for upcoming lunar missions, CSU stated. -0-
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