STP-3 Hosting LCRD - Live Launch Coverage

United Launch Alliance’s Atlas V 551 rocket successfully launched from Launch Complex 41 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida for the Department of Defense’s (DOD) Space Test Program 3 (STP-3) mission on December 7, 2021, at 5:19 a.m. EST. Two satellites were on board, including the Space Test Program Satellite-6 (STPSat-6) spacecraft, which carried two NASA payloads. NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), will be agency’s first end-to-end laser relay system, sending and receiving data over invisible infrared lasers at a rate of approximately 1.2 gigabits per second from geosynchronous orbit to Earth. With data rates 10 to 100 times higher than traditional radio frequency systems, laser communications systems will provide future missions with extraordinary data capabilities. Laser technology may greatly increase bandwidth for communicating in space while reducing size, weight, and power requirements for both government and commercial uses. UVSC Pathfinder — short for Ultraviolet Spectro-Coronagraph Pathfinder — begins its mission to peer at the lowest regions of the Sun’s outer atmosphere, or corona, where solar energetic particles, the Sun’s most dangerous form of radiation, are thought to originate. A joint NASA-U.S. Naval Research Laboratory experiment, UVSC Pathfinder becomes the latest addition to NASA's fleet of heliophysics observatories, which study a vast, interconnected system from the Sun to the space surrounding Earth and other planets, and to the farthest limits of the Sun's constantly flowing stream of solar wind. To stay updated about LCRD and laser communications, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/lasercomms.