While cables for fast fiber optic networks have to be laid at great expense everywhere at the moment, the next generation of data transmission is already being tested.
Wireless data transmission by laser should enable more efficient data transport via satellites in the future.
On Sunday, the world's smallest laser transmission terminal with the awkward name OSIRIS4CubeSat was launched into orbit on board a small satellite.
Oberpfaffenhofen
- The satellite was sent on its journey with a Falcon 9 launcher from Elon Musk's SpaceX in Cape Canaveral.
In the satellite mission, the project partners want to demonstrate that optical communication from space to the ground can be achieved even on the smallest satellites.
And the German Space Control Center in Oberpfaffenhofen is responsible for operating the PIXL-1 satellite.
Up to now, laser terminals were too big to be used on small satellite platforms and they also required too much power.
The launch of PIXL-1 opens up new horizons and expands the mission possibilities for small satellites.
OSIRIS4CubeSat and the CubeLCT product are just 10x10 x3 centimeters in size and fit perfectly on the smallest satellites, but can also be adapted to larger platforms.
The Institute for Communication and Navigation at the German Aerospace Center (DLR) has contributed its results and experience from around 15 years of research.
Even more, the small satellites allow a so-called mega-constellation, with which a broadband internet connection would ultimately be possible worldwide.
In the next steps, optical communication is to be further developed so that optical connections between small satellites in space are also possible.
Using a quantum key, this could even be tap-proof.
"With OSIRIS4CubeSat we have developed a basis that will offer many missions new possibilities in the data rate in the future and offers us at DLR an ideal basis for scientific measurements and the next technological steps in scientific projects," says project manager Christopher Schmidt from the DLR Institute for Communication and navigation.
But because lasers cannot penetrate clouds, a worldwide network of optical ground stations is to be set up at locations with little cloud.
The DLR therefore wants to test locations in the coming months.
Two are currently being set up in Europe.
This satellite is controlled from Oberpfaffenhofen from the control center there.
There the laser terminal is conditioned in such a way that the data reaches the colleagues from the Institute for Communication and Navigation.