Satellite uses phone technology to "phone home"

Watch those roaming charges! [Link

For the first time in spaceflight history, a satellite has used mobile phone technology to radio back to Earth. The Herschel spacecraft – which launched on May 14, called home two days later using the same technology used in GSM mobile phone networks to send test data to ESA’s deep space tracking station. “Herschel’s 1.5-Mbps test transmission - roughly the same data rate provided by a home broadband Internet connection - was picked up at ESA’s ESTRACK station at New Norcia, Australia, on Saturday, as the satellite was travelling some 280 000 km from Earth,” said John Dodsworth, the Herschel-Planck Flight Operations Director.

This marks the first-ever use of Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) modulation in space. GMSK is commonly used in Global System for mobile Communication (GSM) mobile phone networks due to its very efficient use of bandwidth and power.