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Lasers News 22 June 2025 - 28 July 2025

Lasers vs Radio: Inside the Laser Satellite Communication Revolution (2025)

Lasers vs Radio: Inside the Laser Satellite Communication Revolution (2025)

NASA’s TBIRD CubeSat achieved a 200 Gbps laser downlink in 2023, transmitting 4.8 terabytes in under five minutes. SpaceX’s Starlink had over 4,000 satellites in orbit by early 2024, with inter-satellite laser links moving about 42 petabytes per day (roughly 5.6 terabits per second). Amazon’s Project Kuiper demonstrated 100 Gbps inter-satellite laser links in late 2023 over distances of about 1,000 km, with production satellites planned to launch in 2025 and each carrying multiple laser terminals. Europe’s European Data Relay System (SpaceDataHighway) uses Tesat laser terminals on two GEO satellites, delivering up to 1.8 Gbps links and as much as
28 July 2025
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China’s “Night‑Light” Laser vs. Starlink: What a 2‑Watt Beam Really Means for the Coming Orbital Arms Race

China’s “Night‑Light” Laser vs. Starlink: What a 2‑Watt Beam Really Means for the Coming Orbital Arms Race

In June 2025, a Chinese team led by Prof. Wu Jian of Peking University of Posts & Telecommunications and Dr. Liu Chao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences down-linked 1 Gbps from a GEO satellite 36,000 km away using a 2 W infrared laser. The coverage framed the feat as pulverizing Starlink, but there is no evidence of destructive action; the achievement is a bandwidth demonstration. The key innovation is AO‑MDR synergy, combining adaptive optics with mode-diversity reception to correct atmospheric distortion. Adaptive optics reshape the wavefront with hundreds of deformable-mirror actuators, while MDR routes the beam through multiple spatial
22 June 2025
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Space‑Laser Shockwave: Inside China’s 2‑Watt Orbital Beam That Claims to Outgun Starlink and Reshape the Security Balance in Space

Space‑Laser Shockwave: Inside China’s 2‑Watt Orbital Beam That Claims to Outgun Starlink and Reshape the Security Balance in Space

In June 2025, Wu Jian of Peking University of Posts & Telecom and Liu Chao of the Chinese Academy of Sciences directed a 2-watt laser from 36,000 km in geostationary orbit to a ground station, achieving 1 Gbps. The test claimed the 1 Gbps downlink is five times faster than Starlink downlinks, per the South China Morning Post. The AO-MDR scheme combines adaptive optics and mode-diversity, routing eight spatial modes through a 1.8 m telescope and real-time selecting the three cleanest channels. Usable signal quality rose from 72% to 91% despite atmospheric turbulence thanks to AO-MDR. Starlink consumer downlinks typically
22 June 2025
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