You want your Moon landings in HD? So does NASA—here's how it's happening.

NASA tested a low-cost optical ground terminal in Australia during Artemis II to receive laser data from space.

Using off-the-shelf telescope and photon-detection hardware, the system hit its design limit of 260 MB/s.

The result points to a cheaper way to scale high-speed optical communications for lunar, Mars, and deep-space missions.

The approach could also benefit related quantum technologies and other space-to-ground data links.