NASA’s upcoming Artemis III mission will use Starlink mini laser terminals from SpaceX to downlink imagery and video to mission control in Houston.
Under an agreement announced on Thursday, NASA will install two Starlink mini laser terminals on the Orion spacecraft to transmit 4K imagery and video from the mission.
The Artemis III mission is planned for 2027 and will involve practicing rendezvous and docking operations between commercial human landing systems and the Orion spacecraft.
NASA’s recent Artemis II mission used the Optical Communications System (O2O) developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory. NASA reported that O2O transmitted 484 GB of data between the Orion capsule and Earth, sharing many of the images captured by the astronauts onboard.
This agreement with SpaceX was facilitated through NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Communications Services Project to commercialize satellite relay for Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) missions. SpaceX is part of the Communications Services Project (CSP) that NASA named six companies to in 2022.
SpaceX first tested laser communications for human spaceflight on the Polaris Dawn mission that flew on its Dragon spacecraft in 2024. SpaceX also demonstrated this capability to NASA during the Fram2 human spaceflight mission in 2025.
