A shoot-out featuring thousands of lasers is about to break out in low earth orbit. Luckily, no one will get hurt—the lasers’ targets are the protagonists’ own communications satellites.
Amazon has just announced that two of its prototype internet satellites equipped with infrared lasers transferred data at 100 gigabits per second over a distance of nearly 1000 kilometers. The company says all of its upcoming 3236 Project Kuiper satellites will include such interlinks, forming a high-speed mesh network to route data around the world.
SpaceX’s rival Starlink system, which already boasts over 1.5 million customers including the Ukrainian military, has been experimenting with optical interlinks for about a year. It recently claimed to have more than 8,000 space lasers on its newest generation of satellites, which began launching earlier this year.
Now the race is on to build the first complete optical inter-satellite link (OISL) constellation, at a price that’s competitive with terrestrial 5G and fiber networks.
Hellbound and Down 