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.
What does laser communication have to do with all of this?
The new mega constellations, whether they are called Starlink, Lightspeed, OneSat or Kuiper, make use of laser communication technology as large data streams, huge amounts of data and lowest latencies are the benchmark for the new players on the satellite market. All of that can only be achieved with the help of laser communication, where TESAT has the perfect fit for every use case. Taking this special one in account, TESAT can offer its ConLCT (constellation laser communication terminal), which is not only designed to fit the requirements of mass production but also bases on TESAT’s longtime heritage in laser communication technology. This symbiosis results in an optical payload with a modular setup to allow integration with minimum space requirements, while simultaneously supplying unchallenged data transfer parameters.
The advantages of laser communication
Laser communication terminals have smaller space requirements proportional to their performance, which inherently enables large scaled satellite constellations that depend on small satellites in great numbers. The additional benefits of a 10-gigabit-bandwidth, unchallenged data security due to the possibility of quantum key distribution, independence of frequency allocation and remarkable functional range make laser communication a real game changer. That’s how laser communication defines the future of satellite communications.