A CSIRO research scientist has helped develop a technology which will provide a live video link from Mars.

US space agency NASA will bestow the Space Act Board Award on Dr John Bunton, after he developed a design for the ‘Deep Space Array Based Network Beamformer’.

Dr Bunton is a senior member of the CSIRO ICT Centre Wireless Technology laboratory.

NASA needs a live video link from the red planet for a manned mission. However, the current Deep Space Network is not sensitive enough for the task, despite having a 70m antenna.

As opposed to using a large antenna array, Dr Bunton suggested a novel frequency domain beamformer architecture. Video signal data is divided into narrow channels and transported to beamformer boards. Each board sums the narrow channel data from 400 antennas.  This data can then be reconstructed back into a broadband signal.

A prototype has already been built, and has been demonstrated to work on the singals from the mission to Saturn.

The technology could be used in space communications and earth sensing applications.