The FiveThirtyEight.com website reports about space transmission, and the dwindling bandspace for radio waves and a pending switch to laser communications. The current speeds of space communication can be compared to download and upload speeds on Earth. "We can receive 1.5 megabits per second from Mars, which is an average 200 million kilometers from Earth. From Pluto, 7.5 billion kilometers out, download speeds are more like 1 kilobit per second," Rebecca Boyle writes in the story. Those speeds are over the Deep Space Network, with spacecraft sending signals to a collection of giant radio antennas managed by NASA in California, Spain, and Australia. Sometimes, though, there are too many transmissions. “Our current scheduling techniques work quite well when missions are spread across the sky as they typically are,” said Stephen Lichten, manager for special projects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It is more challenging when missions are ‘clumped,’ such as when a large number launch at the same time for the same destination.” In 2020, for instance, the network will be overwhelmed with missions to Mars from SpaceX, India, the United Arab Emirates, the European Space Agency, and NASA. So NASA is testing a new interplanetary internet called disruption tolerant networking with relay stations "that can hold information in transit, serving as a buffer against delays or glitches." But space agencies have further plans to move off of radio waves and switch to lasers. "Laser communications systems encode data onto a beam of optical light (as opposed to radio wavelengths) and then transmit it between spacecraft and to Earth. Focused laser light operates in wavelengths 10,000 times shorter than radio waves, meaning that lasers can pump out more information per second. As a result, laser data-transfer rates are 10 to 100 times better than those of radio systems. Lasers are also better at maintaining their signal strength across vast distances," Boyle writes. The Laser Communications Relay Demonstration mission launches next year.