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To me it sounded like a journalist's awkward wording of a description from an engineer. Some frequencies of light will bend to the curvature of the earth due to the atmosphere[1]. Lasers apparently "hit the Earth's curves" rather than bending with them.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atmospheric_duct

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This happens everyday with the sun during sunrise and sunset [1]. When you first see the apparent top of the sun during sunrise, the sun is still well below the horizon physically. It's just that the image of the sun is refracted around the curvature of the earth a bit.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunrise#Angle

but it's also ~6 minutes ahead of where we see it due to the time it takes the light to get there. I wonder which effect wins?

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