Laser-pointing system could help tiny satellites transmit data to Earth
A new laser-pointing platform developed at MIT may help launch miniature satellites into the high-rate data game. Since 1998, almost 2,000 shoebox-sized satellites known as CubeSats have been launched into space. Due to their petite frame and the fact that they can be made from off-the-shelf parts, CubeSats are significantly more affordable to build and launch than traditional behemoths that cost hundreds of millions of dollars. CubeSats have become game-changers in satellite technology, as they can be sent up in flocks to cheaply monitor large swaths of the Earth’s surface. But as increasingly capable miniaturized instruments enable CubeSats to take highly detailed images, the tiny spacecraft struggle to efficiently transmit large amounts of data down to Earth, due to power and size constraints. The new laser-pointing platform for CubeSats, which is detailed in the journal Optical Engineering, enables CubeSats to downlink data using fewer onboard resources at significantly higher rates than is...