Space Systems/Loral, NASA Collaborate

Space Systems/Loral (SS/L) of Palo Alto, Calif., will partner with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center to host a laser communications relay demonstration on a commercial satellite to be launched in 2016. NASA’s Space Technology Program selected Goddard’s mission proposal to use the SS/L satellite platform to help enable the next era of space communications. Optical communications uses an uncongested portion of spectrum compared with radio-frequency communications currently used to transmit data from space. For commercial satellites, laser communications could provide even faster rates than radio frequency, with much less power and mass – the typical constraints of satellite design.