(Polaris Dawn)
The Polaris Dawn mission is using SpaceX’s Starlink satellites to send high-speed data back to Earth, including footage of one of the astronauts playing the violin in zero-gravity.
On Friday, the mission posted the footage, which shows crewmember Sarah Gillis performing violin onboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule as it completes five-days in orbit around the Earth.
Her performance is accompanied by orchestras from across the globe as Gillis plays the Star Wars composition “Rey’s Theme” over her violin. “As we travel around our beautiful planet Earth on this five-day mission, we wanted to share this special music moment with you,” she says.
The performance appears to be one of the ways the Polaris Dawn crew has been testing the laser communication system over SpaceX’s Starlink satellites, which have been designed to beam high-speed internet to users on Earth.
The testing from the Polaris Dawn mission also underscores how the same satellites can be used for space missions. Typically, Starlink satellites use radio waves to beam internet data to receivers on the ground. But the same satellites also feature an ability to relay data through lasers, which can sustain a 100Gbps connection per link. As a result, the individual Starlink satellites can communicate with each other in orbit, forming a mesh network in space.
It looks like the Polaris Dawn mission’s Dragon capsule has been harnessing the same laser network to send data back to Earth. On Thursday, the mission tweeted two photos taken from the craft, saying “Sent to you from space over a beam of Starlink laser light.”
Early Friday morning, the mission then teased Gillis’s violin performance, tweeting: “Downlink confirmed stay tuned!” This suggests her violin footage wasn’t live streamed, but first sent to the various orchestras on Earth, which filled out the rest of the composition.