[ortusdux]

> “Another really fun fact is that we held a link all the way down to 122 kilometers while we were de-orbiting a satellite,” he said. “And we were able to downstream the video.”

> For the future, SpaceX plans on expanding its laser system so that it can be ported and installed on third-party satellites. The company has also explored beaming the satellite lasers directly to terminals on the Earth’s surface to deliver data.

[FpUser]

So what happens to the laser beam when there are clouds?

[caymanjim]

The lasers aren't used for ground-to-satellite comms. While they refer to some of them maintaining a link through the atmosphere, the lasers are intended for satellite-to-satellite communication way above the atmosphere.

[Tuna-Fish]

There are some wavelengths that maintain decent signal quality through cloud cover, and even rainstorms. I cannot find the paper right now, but iirc Tightbeam (formerly from the Google sharks with lasers team, now spun out as Aalyria), demonstrated space to ground comms in adverse weather with negligible packet loss and something like 40% reduced bandwidth.

The customer terminals will likely never connect through lasers (because a laser can only point in one direction at a time), but moving the ground station uplink to a laser link sounds very beneficial.

[hrkfmud50k]

maybe it could route around the clouds via some other satellites

[indolering]

It would fall back to radio and/or other connections. The laser connection would probably be sold at a discount rate due to the variable level of service.

[odyssey7]

Interesting parallel to solar panels.