Electromagnetic interference.
It makes phoning home a little harder.
At NASA, we rely on space communications to hear from our spacecraft.
It's how they send their science and mission data back to Earth.
Most missions today use radio waves to transmit this data.
Electromagnetic interference
is a disturbance on the communications link coming to or from a satellite.
This interference, also known as noise, can result in partial
or complete data loss.
Usually this interference is caused by a human-made object
like a car alternator or something natural, like a solar storm.
They can come from many different things, which is why NASA communications
engineers monitor the signals going to and from a spacecraft.
They watch to ensure the signal power -- which contains the data comprised
of digital ones and zeros -- is higher than the level of noise impacting the signal.
This signal power to noise
ratio tells the network how much usable data they're getting back from a mission.
At the end of the day, our communications engineers work to ensure
NASA's missions can transmit data without the fear of interference.