During a commissioning and early operations phase, Kepler established optical inter-satellite links between two Pathfinder satellites equipped with Space Development Agency (SDA) compatible TESAT SCOT80 optical terminals in low earth orbit.

Kepler Communications, TESAT and Airbus Defence and Space have entered into an agreement to develop a high bandwidth optical communications network in low Earth orbit (LEO).

TESAT develops new electroless plating technique based on ionic liquids that allows plating of different substrate materials with gold, silver or nickel with a thickness of only a few micrometres.

TESAT reaches an important milestone in the expansion of its cleanroom manufacturing capacity by 4,000 square meters to a total of 21,000 square meters with the topping-out ceremony of the new building on Thursday, May 4, 2023.

Kepler Communications has selected TESAT to supply optical inter-satellite links for its next generation of satellites. TESAT’s SCOTT80 (constellation laser communication terminals) will be installed on Kepler’s first tranche of ÆTHER satellites, enabling optical service for The Kepler Network, a real-time, always-on communication network in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) providing the internet in space for space assets.

The events of the last few days have tragically demonstrated the importance of satellite communication in Germany, but also throughout Europe. Not only do early warning systems rely on information from earth observation satellites, communication and, above all, coordination of rescue teams could hardly be managed without support from low earth orbits. Especially since the severe disaster caused terrestrial systems to reach their limits early on or were also affected by the destruction.

The satellite system that is able to provide such information and images in near real-time, is part of the Copernicus program of the European Union and ESA. Here, among other things, the two twin satellite pairs Sentinel-1A and -1B as well as Sentinel-2A and -2B fly in low-earth orbits in order to create high-resolution images. With laser communication terminals (LCT) from TESAT, this data is sent to geostationary satellites of the European Data Relay Satellite System (EDRS) in order to make the information usable on earth within a very short time frame.

The use of the TESAT LCTs in the context of the EDRS provides the decisive advantage, as the satellite images are available in barely more than 15 minutes for planning time-critical support. Images and information that – without the help of the optical payloads – would either take hours to download or would otherwise only be available in lower resolution.

We at TESAT are happy to be able to make a contribution here with our technology and to be able to prevent worse.

Further links: Situation information for disaster management - DLR Portal

By beginning of May 2021, the quantity counter of the „Automated Microwave Factory“ exceeded a volume of 100,000 complex microwave hybrids. The precise quantity of 102,077 pcs splits in 83,321 LTCC multilayer hybrids and 18,756 MHICs (Microwave Hybrid Integrated Circuits). Roughly 50 million adhesive dots have been dispensed and more than 26 million gold wires have been applied.

When space industry so far was defined by huge individual satellites planned for a long lifetime, NewSpace and new approaches by new global market players have changed the view and the whole industry sustainably. Satellites are becoming smaller, lighter and exchangeable to serve a greater purpose in large satellite constellations. Thus, satellite constellations can deal with problems and deliver solutions for which prior no convenient key was acquirable, such as e.g. high-speed internet in even rural areas. Here, satellite communication and especially satellite constellations have a large advantage before terrestrial solutions that whether have to deal with long awarding processes followed by even longer construction phases or business models that don’t pay off at the end. Satellite constellations consisting of hundreds of satellites covering the globe can here play off their upper hand as, once in orbit, the needed services can be made accessible from all over the world in virtually no time.

Even before satellite television, most people clearly are more familiar with the application of satellites in the field of navigation. For decades, satellites have been providing more and more precise position data in various different global navigation satellite systems such as GPS, GLONASS, Galileo or Beidou. More than just allowing people to navigate through unknown territories, those systems essentially enable globalization in its core, with all its global value-, goods-, and data streams.

If you ping a server in Sydney from southern Germany, on bad days you have enough time for about four blueberry pies – scientifically determined with the help of a chronograph and the editor’s ability to pronounce the word “blueberry pie” as quickly as possible. Based on the assumption that the ping travels in a fiber optic cable during its entire route between Munich and Sydney, it reaches – purely mathematically – a speed of approx. 11,600 m/s (distance 35,000 kilometers divided by 3 seconds). In this admittedly rather simple calculation, which by far does not include all aspects of terrestrial data transmission, nonetheless one thing is becoming clear: Cable-based data transmission is limited, in some places still unrivalled, but fundamentally limited.