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Sony Space Communications Corp registered on Wednesday to use laser technology to avoid radio frequency bottlenecks. These devices will work between satellites in space and satellites that communicate with earth stations.
The company did not say when it expected the first commercial equipment to run in space, whether there were existing customers waiting in line, or how much it had invested in the technology so far.
At present, there are about 12000 satellites in orbit. With the rocket companies reducing the cost of launching things into space, and companies such as Amazon and SpaceX establishing a huge low earth satellite network to transmit Internet communications to all parts of the world, this number is expected to increase rapidly in the next few years.
Kyohei Iwamoto, President of Sony space communications, said in a statement: "the amount of data used in orbit is also increasing year by year, but the number of available radio waves is limited."
SpaceX built its own laser communication equipment in-house and launched it on its Starlink satellite for the first time at the end of last year.
Sony said that one of its first successful tests was conducted in 2020, when it transmitted high-definition image data from the international space station to a ground station in Japan by laser.