JAXA announced Monday it has successfully completed an optical communications experiment using laser beams between Kirari, its Optical Inter-orbit Communication Engineering Test Satellite, and a mobile ground station operated by DLR, the German space agency.
DLR's station, positioned at Wessling, a town in Bavaria, made contact with the satellite as it orbited at an altitude of about 600 kilometers (375 miles). The test took place June 7, and JAXA and DLR confirmed that the optical communication downlink was successfully maintained for three minutes.
The Kirari previously had performed bi-directional optical communications experiments with the optical ground station of Japan's National Institute of Information and Communication Technology last March. However, the test with the DLR optical ground station is unique because it is mobile, so the success this time indicates the possibility of establishing flexible optical communications networks between satellites and mobile optical ground stations.
Kirari is scheduled to continue the experiments, JAXA said in a news release, including a communications test with an optical ground station and an inter-orbit optical communications test with ESA's Advanced Relay and Technology Mission.
