A second pair of satellites that use light to talk to each other have been launched.
The satellites were developed under an ESA Partnership Project with satellite manufacturer and operator Spire Global based in Glasgow in the UK.
Spire Global’s constellation of satellites provides global weather intelligence, ship and plane movements, and spoofing and jamming detection, to better predict how their patterns impact economies, global security, business operations and the environment.
The pair of satellites will use optical inter-satellite links to send information between themselves securely and almost instantaneously. To achieve this, they are designed to achieve the equivalent of using a laser pointer to link two satellites, each the size of a large box of cornflakes, placed 5000 km apart – equivalent to the distance from Glasgow to New York.
The pair of satellites will demonstrate the ability to send more than 14 GB of data securely between the two terminals during a short contact window when the spacecraft can see each other across the Earth.