Fastest Data Connection In Space Comes From The Moon

Right now, data is arriving across 384,300 kilometres at 100MBps (as in megabytes per second, not megabits), dwarfing every home internet connections out there. That’s a total of 461GB of data transmitted per day, thanks to this moon-orbiting device.

The 33 centimetre Travelling Wave Tube Amplifier is the first high data rate K-band transmitter on a NASA spacecraft. It’s on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is sending massive amounts of data, from images of its surface—like the first photos of the Apollo sites in 40 years—to 3D data points which are being processed into the most detailed topographical map of our satellite. [NASA]