America’s military establishment is worried that its satellite network is not up to scratch. But it has a plan
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskIn light of this sort of thing, America’s military establishment is worried that its satellite network is not up to snuff. But it has a plan. The Space-Based Adaptive Communications Node will, if successful, create a laser-enabled military internet in orbit around Earth by piggybacking on a number of satellites that would have been launched anyway.
The ability to hand military information from bird to bird like this—and without the constraints imposed by differences in the communication protocols of the satellites providing the piggyback—will greatly simplify matters. Individual satellites can download data only when in range of a terrestrial antenna belonging to their particular network, or via another member of that network, which is likely to be in a similar orbit.
The heart of all this is the precision of aim that will be built into Space Bacon’s lasers. Phil Root, head of’s Strategic Technology Office, says pondering this “blows my mind”. Satellites in low Earth orbits travel at about 7.8km a second, often tumbling as they go. Connecting the optical heads on two of these will be an epic task. Advances have, however, been impressive. Mynaric, a firm based near Munich that is designing heads for Space Bacon, can adjust a laser’s trajectory by just 57.
Even with these levels of precision however, initial direct hits on a distant head will probably be rare, says David Mackey, mBryonics’ top technologist. Optical heads attempting to link up will therefore conduct what he calls blind spiral search patterns. When a beam finds its mark, the signal will inform the receiver of the sender’s exact position. Using a different wavelength, to prevent interference, the receiver will then fire a laser back along the same path to confirm the connection.
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