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

collecting light, decoding data

At a high level, the concept is fairly straightforward. A spacecraft encodes the data onto a laser, which sends a narrow beam toward Earth. Large ground-based optical telescopes collect 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 difficult the challenge. A laser beam emerges from geostationary orbit about 22,000 miles (36,000 km) above Earth, about the diameter of a coffee cup, and when it reaches Earth, it is about 1 km in diameter. The farther, the farther the beam spreads, so ground-based telescopes can catch only a tiny fraction of the signal from distant spacecraft.

So the future of communications across the sky will likely be based on relay spacecraft, which are essentially like Internet routers on Earth. “We’re going to build systems that will be deployed in space and become the fiber optics infrastructure of communications throughout the solar system,” Rolker said.

At least that is the viewpoint.

But this has started happening. Observable Space played a key role in facilitating optical communications on Artemis II as it flew around the Moon in April. This type of high-bandwidth communications is expected to become the standard for future Artemis missions and will enable lunar landings in high definition.

Observable Space is also talking to SpaceX and anyone else interested in developing an orbital data center because that technology requires high-bandwidth links from space to the ground. And the way to avoid clouds is to have lots of ground stations around the planet. That’s why Observable Space Telescope is focused on increasing production and reducing costs.

Investors are buying. In late May, the company announced that it had closed a $90 million Series A funding round and would use the money to largely accelerate its laser communications business.

Rolkar is happy to leave it to other companies to launch into space. He has seen SpaceX from the inside and knows that he can never compete with it. Similarly, there are many companies manufacturing spacecraft and satellite buses.

All those vehicles require the command of light. It is needed to navigate rockets and especially spacecraft. They need to see objects to avoid collisions. And somehow, whatever data they’re collecting and processing needs to get them back to Earth. Because, otherwise, what’s the point?