Optical Communications
Sinclair Interplanetary is currently working on optical communications for small spacecraft.
Optical Crosslinks | These are symmetric full-duplex crosslinks that can move 100 Mbps between two satellites 250 km apart. Crosslink Datasheet |
Optical Downlinks | The satellite downlink incorporates a star tracker for guidance, which can also be used as a general ADCS sensor for the spacecraft. It has a data rate of 1 Gbps at 1000 km slant range. The ground station is a 22" Newtonian telescope, incorporating coarse and fine star guidance cameras. For safety and regulatory simplicity there is no uplink or beacon laser in the ground segment. Downlink Datasheet |