'A beautiful soul': Funeral held for baby boy killed in wrong-way crash on Highway 401
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
The use of invisible lasers in space may sound like something from science fiction, but it's real.
NASA's upcoming Laser Communications Relay Demonstration could revolutionize the way the agency communicates with future missions across the solar system.
These lasers could lead to more high-definition videos and photos from space than ever before, according to the agency.
The mission is set to launch as a payload aboard the US Department of Defense's Space Test Program Satellite 6 on December 5 from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The launch window will remain open from 4:04 a.m. to 6:04 a.m. ET, and the agency will share live coverage of the launch on NASA TV and its website.
Since 1958, NASA has used radio waves to communicate with its astronauts and space missions. While radio waves have a proven track record, space missions are becoming more complex and collecting more data than before.
Think of infrared lasers as the optical communication version of high-speed internet, as opposed to frustratingly slow dial-up internet. Laser communications will send data to Earth from an orbit synchronous with the Earth's rotation, 22,000 miles (35,406 kilometers) above Earth's surface at 1.2 gigabits-per-second, which is like downloading an entire movie in under a minute.
This will improve data transmission rates 10 to 100 times better than radio waves. Infrared lasers, which are invisible to our eyes, have shorter wavelengths than radio waves, so they can transmit more data at once.
Using the current radio wave system, it would take nine weeks to send back a complete map of Mars -- but lasers could do it in nine days.
The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration is NASA's first end-to-end laser relay system that will send and receive data from space to two optical ground stations in Table Mountain, California, and Haleakalā, Hawaii. These stations have telescopes that can receive the light from the lasers and translate it into digital data. Unlike radio antennas, laser communication receivers can be up to 44 times smaller. Because the satellite can both send and receive data, it's a true two-way system.
The one disruption to these ground-based laser receivers is atmospheric disturbances, like clouds and turbulence, which can interfere with laser signals traveling through our atmosphere. The remote locations for the two receivers were chosen with this in mind since both typically have clear weather conditions at high altitudes.
Once the mission arrives in orbit, the team at the operations center in Las Cruces, New Mexico, will activate the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration and prepare it to send tests to the ground stations.
The mission is expected to spend two years conducting tests and experiments before it begins supporting space missions, including an optical terminal that will be installed on the International Space Station in the future. It will be able to send data from science experiments on the space station to the satellite, which will relay them back to Earth.
The demonstration acts as a relay satellite, which eliminates the need for future missions to have antennas with a direct line-of-sight on Earth. The satellite could help reduce the size, weight and power requirements for communications on future spacecraft -- although this mission is about the size of a king mattress.
This means that future missions could be less expensive to launch and would have room for more science instruments.
Other missions currently in development that could test laser communication capabilities include the Orion Artemis II Optical Communications System, which will allow for an ultra-high-definition video feed between NASA and Artemis astronauts venturing to the moon.
And the Psyche mission, which launches in 2022, will reach its asteroid destination in 2026. The mission will study a metallic asteroid that is more than 150 million miles (241 million kilometres) away and test its Deep Space Optical Communication laser to send data back to Earth.
A funeral was held on Wednesday for a three-month-old boy who died after being involved in a wrong-way crash on Highway 401 in Whitby last week.
There has been a "sophisticated" cybersecurity breach detected on B.C. government networks, Premier David Eby confirmed Wednesday evening.
Toronto police say a man was taken into custody outside Drake's Bridle Path mansion Wednesday afternoon after he tried to gain access to the residence.
U.S. President Joe Biden said for the first time Wednesday he would halt shipments of American weapons to Israel, which he acknowledged have been used to kill civilians in Gaza, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu orders a major invasion of the city of Rafah.
Dakota Joshua had a goal and two assists and the Vancouver Canucks scored three third-period goals to claw out a 5-4 comeback victory over the Edmonton Oilers in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series Wednesday.
One of the Indian nationals accused of murdering British Columbia Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar says in a social media video that he received a Canadian study permit with the help of an Indian immigration consultancy.
Pfizer has agreed to settle more than 10,000 lawsuits about cancer risks related to the now discontinued heartburn drug Zantac, Bloomberg News reported on Wednesday, citing people familiar with the deal.
Quebec Premier Francois Legault is defending his comments about a new history museum after he was accused by a prominent First Nations group of trying to erase their history.
Independent U.S. presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had a parasite in his brain more than a decade ago, but has fully recovered, his campaign said, after the New York Times reported about the ailment.
The stakes have been set for a bet between Vancouver and Edmonton's mayors on who will win Round 2 of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
A grieving mother is hosting a helmet drive in the hopes of protecting children on Manitoba First Nations from a similar tragedy that killed her daughter.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
A P.E.I. lighthouse and a New Brunswick river are being honoured in a Canada Post series.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.