Chinese researchers have announced the successful completion of two-way communications between the moon and the Earth using laser.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences believes this could signal the beginning of a so-called "information highway" for high-speed data transmission that can eventually serve missions to the moon.

The distance covered was 400,000 km or more than 248,000 miles. The move from near-Earth orbit testing to deep space was a milestone for researchers in the academy's Technology and Engineering Center for Space Utilization. The scientists had previously used only in-orbit tests.

The greater bandwidth, faster speed and increased security offered by laser communication have all been viewed as great benefits but they were offset by such obstacles as the need for precise beam alignment, weakness of the signal and speed of transmission.

To get improved results researchers developed high-speed superconducting single-photon detection technology to assist with copying the signals; they also made use of high-bandwidth signal processing technology, reporting transmission rates of 1.25 Mbps uplink and 100 Mbps downlink.