Chinese Orbiter Crushes Starlink With a 2-Watt Laser From 36,000km Above Earth
The Daily Galaxy • • science
Key Points:
- A team led by Wu Jian and Liu Chao in China demonstrated a 1Gbps laser downlink from a geostationary satellite 36,000 km above Earth using a low-power 2-watt laser, achieving speeds about five times faster than Starlink despite the much greater distance.
- The ground system at Lijiang Observatory used a 1.8-meter telescope combined with 357 micro-mirrors for adaptive optics, correcting atmospheric distortion in real time and employing a multi-plane light converter to split the signal into multiple channels for improved data recovery.
- This combined adaptive optics and mode diversity reception (AO-MDR) approach increased the usable signal proportion from 72% to 91.1%, enhancing both speed and reliability
