WASHINGTON: NASA has successfully beamed a high-definition video with the message "Hello, World! from the International Space Station to Earth using a new laser communications instrument.

The US space agency's Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) instrument transmitted a new 37-second, 175-megabit video called "Hello, World!" to a ground station in California on June 5.

It took OPALS 3.5 seconds to transmit each copy of the "Hello World!" video message, which would have taken more than 10 minutes using traditional downlink methods, NASA said.

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

"We look forward to experimenting with OPALS over the coming months in hopes that our findings will lead to optical communications capabilities for future deep space exploration missions," Abrahamson said.

Optical communication tools like OPALS use focused laser energy to reach data rates between 10 and 1,000 times higher than current space communications, which rely on radio portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

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