This former hacker saw the light—and now wants to collect all of it

Gathering light, decoding data At a high level, the concept is fairly straightforward. A spacecraft encodes data onto a laser, which sends a narrow beam toward Earth. Large optical telescopes on the ground collect the incoming photons, and detectors convert the light back into electrical signals. Sophisticated error-correction software reconstructs the original message as many photons are lost. The greater the distance, the more daunting the challenge. A laser beam from geostationary orbit, about 22,000 miles (36,000 km) above Earth, starts out about the diameter of a coffee cup, and when it reaches Earth, it’s about 1km across. The farther away, the farther the beam spread, so ground-based telescopes can capture only a tiny fraction of the signal from distant spacecraft. The future of communication throughout the heavens will therefore probably be based on relay spacecraft, which are essentially like Internet routers here on Earth. “We’re going to be building the systems that get deployed in space and become the fiber optics infrastructure of communication across the Solar System,” Roelker said. That’s the vision, at least. But it is starting to happen. Observable Space played a key role in facilitating optical communications on Artemis II in April as it flew around the Moon. This type of high-bandwidth communications is expected to become standard for future Artemis missions and will enable lunar landings in high definition. …