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Sony Space Communications Corp, registered on Wednesday, is
meant to take advantage of laser technology to avoid a
bottleneck of radio frequencies. The devices will work between
satellites in space and satellites communicating with ground
stations.
The company did not say when it expects to have its first
commercial device operating in space, whether it has existing
customers lined up or how much money it has invested into the
technology to date.
There are roughly 12,000 satellites in orbit, a number that is
projected to increase rapidly in the coming years as rocket
companies slash the cost of launching things to space, and as
firms like Amazon and SpaceX build vast networks of low-earth
satellites to carry internet communications to all the globe.
"The amount of data used in orbit is also increasing year by
year, but the amount of available radio waves is limited," the
new company's president, Kyohei Iwamoto, said in a statement.
SpaceX makes its own laser communications devices in-house and
first launched them on its Starlink satellites late last year.
Sony said one of its first successful tests occurred in 2020
when it transmitted high-definition image data by laser from the
International Space Station to a ground station in Japan.
(Reporting by Joey Roulette; editing by Peter Henderson and
Sandra Maler)
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