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e12e • today at 7:28 PM • 0 replies • view on HN

Starshield (military arm of SpaceX/Starlink) does this for satellite imaging.

Normally in imaging, you first need to get the satellite over the location you want to image, at the right time - then let it orbit over a downlink location.

There are companies making a lot of money by having downlink capability in useful places (eg: near the poles) - combined with a fat pipe to the Internet.

With Starshield, the satellites talk to each other over laser - so the satellite doesn't have to wait to travel to a downlink location - just relay to of that is already there.

So for certain special cases it can help - but I think you'll find a cable stuffed with multimodal fiber had vastly more bandwidth.