Products + Technology

IR Lasers Link 9,000 Starlink Satellites And Move 42 Million GB Per Day

David Shiller February 20, 2024

SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet constellation now has over 9,000 communications satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO). The satellites form an enormous mesh network utilizing infrared lasers that share information across space, between satellites, known as inter-satellite laser communication. The inter-satellite system achieves a bandwidth of 42 petabytes (PB) per day, which equals 42 million gigabytes (GB) per day. This is a new record for inter-satellite communications. The system has a 5.6 Terrabytes per second (Tbps) throughput.

Each satellite is equipped with a 100 Gigabyte per second laser transceiver. Over time, SpaceX plans to upgrade its satellites with better laser transceivers, make the system available for use by other third-party satellites, and beam the lasers directly down to Earth, using ground-based transceivers.

More information is available here.

All Images: SpaceX

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