European Space Agency and China both achieve gigabit links to geostationary satellites

The European Space Agency and the Institute of Optoelectronics at China’s Academy of Sciences both claim they’ve achieved gigabit links to satellites in geostationary orbit.

The ESA went first with a February 26th announcement of a successful experiment in which a terminal made by Airbus locked onto the Alphasat TDP 1 satellite, 36 000 km above Earth, and “maintained an error-free connection while transmitting data at 2.6 gigabits per second for several minutes.”

“Establishing laser links between moving targets at this distance is technically very challenging. Continuous movements, platform vibrations and atmospheric disturbances require extreme precision,” said François Lombard, Head of Connected Intelligence at Airbus Defence and Space, in a canned quote. “This milestone is a further development of our long successful laser communication history; it opens the door to a new era of laser satellite communications to meet defence and commercial needs in the next decades ...