One of the next big upgrades in telecom will involve satellites firing lasers at each other—to beam data, not blow stuff up.
The upside of replacing traditional radio-frequency communication with lasers, that encode data as pulses of light, can be much like that of deploying fiber-optic cable for terrestrial broadband: much faster speeds and much lower latency.
“Laser links in orbit can reduce long-distance latency by as much as 50%, due to higher speed of light in vacuum & shorter path than undersea fiber,” SpaceX founder Elon Musk tweeted in July about the upgrade now beginning for that firm’s Starlink satellite constellation.
The first batch of laser-equipped Starlink satellites went up to polar orbits in January, Musk confirmed January 24. Its most recent launch in early September featured version 1.5 spacecraft with the latest laser technology.
In a report posted April 5, the market-research firm MoffettNathanson called lasers essential to Starlink’s ambition of…
Read More…
Source : fastcompany.com
Source link
