ESA Achieves Gigabit-Per-Second Laser Link Between Aircraft and Geostationary Satellite

The European Space Agency (ESA), working with the Netherlands Organization for Applied Scientific Research (TNO) and German payload manufacturer TESAT, has successfully demonstrated the world’s first gigabit-per-second laser link between an aircraft and a geostationary satellite. A transmission rate of 2.6 Gbps was sustained for several minutes without errors during the test, marking a significant advancement in satellite communication technology.

Breaking the Speed Barrier

The test, conducted in Nimes, France, utilized an aircraft terminal connected to the Alphasat TDP-1 satellite, positioned approximately 36,000 km above Earth. ESA highlights the considerable challenge of maintaining accuracy at such distances, accounting for the aircraft’s movement, atmospheric conditions, and cloud cover. Source

Implications for Future Communications

This achievement represents a major step forward for laser-based communication, potentially paving the way for its widespread adoption in satellite communications for both commercial and military applications. François Lombard, Head of Connected Intelligence at Airbus Defence and Space, believes this milestone will unlock future laser satellite communications “in the next decades.”

Laser-based communication offers significant advantages over traditional radio-based systems. Lasers operate at much faster speeds than radio waves, and their focused beams can mitigate the slowdowns caused by increasingly congested radio frequencies.

Beyond Current Capabilities

While laser-based satellites already exist, achieving gigabit-per-second bandwidth at high altitudes and with aircraft as the terrestrial connection point has been a long-standing challenge. The TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) satellite previously achieved a data transfer rate of 200 Gbps, but only from an orbit of 530 km. Source

Context of Increasing Satellite Launches

This breakthrough comes at a time of rapidly increasing satellite launches, which will further exacerbate radio frequency congestion in space. SpaceX, for example, plans to launch over 1 million satellites to establish an “Orbital Data Center system” and is preparing to launch 15,000 new Starlink V2 satellites with 5G capabilities and significantly increased data density.

Alphasat and TESAT’s Role

Alphasat, likewise known as Inmarsat 1-XL, is a joint project by ESA, Inmarsat, and the French space agency CNES, designed to demonstrate and validate the new Alphabus generation of telecommunication satellite platforms. Source Source TESAT, a German payload manufacturer, played a crucial role in developing the optical communication terminal used in the test. Source In October 2025, TESAT delivered the first SCOT20 Optical Communication Terminal (OCT) to Planetek Hellas for Greece’s National Satellite Space Program, supported by ESA. Source