Ball Aerospace and COM DEV Launch Start-Up

COM DEV International, based in Cambridge, Ontario, Canada, and Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp. in Boulder, Colo., have formed Laser Communications International to capitalize on the development of laser-based optical satellites.
The new company, based in Boulder, will draw on the systems engineering and space optics experience of both parent companies to develop terminals for proposed satellite communications systems such as Teledesic and Celestri. The laser terminals will communicate between low Earth orbit satellites at distances up to 10,000 km, sending and receiving digital information transferred via optical beams. The proposed systems will transfer data at an expected rate of 2 Gb/s.