Laser-pointing system could help tiny satellites transmit data to Earth
news.mit.edu
news.mit.edu
A laser system would be pretty neat, not having to worry about frequency spectrum requirements and regulations, increasing bandwidth, and reducing cost...until a cloud gets in the way.
[0] http://www.amsat.org/pipermail/amsat-bb/2018-December/070833...
But now they only block the beam
I can't download a kitten meme
So many things I would have streamed
But clouds got in the wayMy naive assumption is that, at the macro scale, you will have a slowly varying snaking path through the atmosphere, causing the beam position on the ground to lazily move about. And, at the smaller scale, turbulence, spread, and flicker within that beam (caustics?).
Does anyone have some insight?
They came up with solutions, and no doubt there are more and cheaper solutions today, given advances in materials, computing and astrophoto stacking techniques.
Note that they were able to use off-the-shelf tank infrared detectors ($50,000 each) to detect ICBM launches from space, so I suspect even more cross-pollination 35 years later. For example, fiber optics are orders of magnitude better now.