This week, NASA put into service the last of its current generation of communication satellites, which relay voice and data for more than 40 ongoing space missions.

The new Tracking, Data, and Relay Satellite (TDRS) -- called TDRS-13 -- launched in August and has been undergoing testing in Earth's orbit ever since.

Since the 1980s, NASA's third generation of communications satellites have monitored every astronaut heartbeat and delivered every spoken word in near real-time, and they've done so using microwave radio frequency technology.

It's a far cry better than the Apollo-era technology, when astronauts could only communicate with NASA about 15% of the time.

The space agency says the next generation will use lasers to optically transport data much faster and more reliably.

NASA TDRS Project Manager, David Littmann, tells our Burton Fitzsimmons about the satellite network and gives us a preview of the future of space communication.

TDRS-13 spacecraft has a projected lifetime of 15 years.

For more:
nasa.gov
@NASA_TDRS