Yes, you read it right data communication technology is possible in space. A team from NASA and MIT scientists has successfully demonstrated the ability to send wireless internet signals across the 384,000 kilometers that separates earth on its moon.

The team registered success in transmitting data at roughly 19Mbps. It also managed to have 622Mbps download speed from the moon to the earth.

"Communicating at high data rates from Earth to the moon with laser beams is challenging because of the 400 000-kilometre distance spreading out the light beam", affirmed Mark Stevens from MIT.

They used four separate telescopes in New Mexico to send an uplink signal to the moon. With the help of a laser transmitter, the information was sent through each telescope as coded pulses of infrared light leading to 40 watts of transmitter power.

This setup helped researchers to upload information from earth to the moon at a rate of 19.44 Mbps, which is equal to basic broadband speed on earth. Researchers said they were able to download information from the moon at a great speed of 622 Mbps.

The speed of upload and download shows that the new laser-powered communication is around 4,800 times faster than radio transmission speeds achieved by RF signals. On June 9, the technology will be presented at the CLEO laser technology conference in California.

In the conference, researchers will explain how they transmitted the data and will also explain how they avoided atmosphere disturbances capable of bending light. The turbulence was compensated by the four telescopes.

NASA and MIT expect that one day they would enable data communication for near-Earth missions.