alt Hacker NewsInteresting there is an optical networking option for end users (claims ~6TBps). Maybe a really dumb question, but how would the end user's ground station maintain connectivity during cloudy weather? Do they have cloud-penetrating lasers from the MEO satellites? Would that interfere with aircraft, astronomy tools, etc?
Some short googling says they have lasers that clear a path for a data carrying beam, but that seems wasteful/infeasible for commercial uses
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BrianGragg • today at 7:49 PM
I think customer speeds is 144 and the 6Tb is their ground links to their stations. That is my take on it at least as its not super clear. I'm curious as to how it works as well.
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Some info from NASA optical communication page.
"Even Earth’s atmosphere interferes with optical communications. Clouds and mist can interrupt a laser. A solution to this is building multiple ground stations, which are telescopes on Earth that receive infrared waves. If it’s cloudy at one station, the waves can be redirected to a different ground station. With more ground stations, the network can be more flexible during bad weather. SCaN is also investigating multiple approaches, like Delay/Disruption Tolerant Networking and satellite arrays to help deal with challenges derived from atmospheric means."
https://www.nasa.gov/technology/space-comms/optical-communic...
Some more info on Optical Communications for Satellites: https://www.kiss.caltech.edu/workshops/optcomm/presentations...