NASA successfully sent an HD video from space to their ground controls using their new laser technology. The new technology could make data transfer almost 200 percent faster than the current rate.

The message said, "Hello, World!" from the International Space Station (ISS) and received successfully by the ground control staff of NASA on Thursday, June 5. The 175-megabit video transmission was the very first data sent over the Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS). OPALS were specifically built to improve the data transfer from space stations orbiting Earth and those on missions in different locations. The U.S space agency compared this new technology to a technology upgrade from dial-up to DSL.

Earlier this spring, the SpaceX Dragon brought OPALS to the ISS. OPALS demonstrated NASA's study on creating higher-bandwidth technologies that could also impact communications in the near future.

OPALS is an optical communication tool, and it works by using laser energy to access data rates 1,000 times higher than current data rates of space communications. To date, space communications heavily rely on radio signals and electromagnetic spectrum.

"It's incredible to see this magnificent beam of light arriving from our tiny payload on the space station," Matt Abrahamson, OPALS mission manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, said in a press release.

The ISS orbits the Earth at approximately 17, 500 mph. NASA explained that this speed required them to be precise in their pointing ability. To achieve the necessary precision, OPALS connected to ground beacon, whose signal was emitted by the Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory located at the Table Mountain Observatory in California.

During the first message relay, OPALS locked into the signal before it transferred beams from its nanometer to transmit the video. The transmission lasted for 149 seconds and recorded data rate of 50 megabits per second. OPALS spent 3.5 seconds sending the video message. In comparison, traditional radio transmission would take more than 10 minutes to send the same video message.