Dec. 14 (UPI) — Amazon announced Thursday that its upcoming Internet satellites will be equipped with terminals to create a mesh of laser links to increase connection speeds.
The company said it completed private tests of its optical inter-satellite link, or OISL, capabilities that will be featured on all of its Project Kuiper satellites and can send 100 gigabytes of data per second between spacecraft over a distance of nearly 621 miles.
“With optical inter-satellite links across our satellite constellation, Project Kuiper will effectively operate as a,” said Rajeev Badyal, Project Kuiper’s vice president of technology in an Amazon statement. “
“This system is designed fully in-house to optimize for speed, cost, and reliability, and the entire architecture has worked flawlessly from the very start. These immediate results are only possible because we approached our OISL architecture as one part of a fully integrated system design, and it’s a testament to this team’s willingness to invent on behalf of customers.”
Amazon said its optical inter-satellite links use infrared lasers to send data between spacecraft as they orbit the planet. While conventional satellites send data between an individual satellite and antennas on the ground, Amazon says its OISLs allow satellites to send data directly to other satellites in its space constellation.
“We are equipping every Project Kuiper satellite with multiple optical terminals to connect many satellites at a time, establishing high-speed laser cross-links that form a secure, resilient mesh network in space. These capabilities increase throughput and reduce latency across our constellation, and provide more flexibility to connect Kuiper customers across land, sea, air, and space,” Amazon said.
The latest successful test came after Amazon last month said its Project Kuiper Payload Integration and testing team established a connection with two prototype satellites and conducted a series of tests such as logging into Amazon Prime to complete a purchase, streaming an Amazon Original movie as an ultra-high definition 4K video and conducting the first two-way video call over Amazon Prime.
Amazon plans to install 3,236 satellites into low Earth orbit by the end of 2026 to provide broadband to areas with little or no Internet access. Full-scale deployment is on track to begin in the first half of 2024, with beta testing with select customers later in the year.
