U.S. military satellites manufactured by York Space Systems and SpaceX have successfully demonstrated a cross-vendor laser communications link in low Earth orbit, marking a key achievement for the Pentagon's next-generation satellite network.
The satellites are part of the U.S. Space Force's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a network designed to improve military communications and missile tracking capabilities. The demonstration was conducted using satellites from PWSA's Tranche 0, the initial phase of the program, which involves 27 satellites operating at approximately 1,000 kilometers in altitude.
On Jan. 9, York Space Systems, based in Denver, announced that one of its Tranche 0 Transport satellites transmitted data to a Tranche 0 Tracking satellite developed by SpaceX using laser communication terminals. The satellites utilized terminals supplied by Tesat-Spacecom, while SpaceX employed its internally developed terminals for commercial satellites.
Dirk Wallinger, CEO of York Space Systems, commented, “This demonstration realizes another important step in the Space Development Agency's (SDA) achieving its vision of an extensible and proliferated constellation built by multiple vendors to a common interface standard.” Neither York nor the SDA provided specific technical details of the demonstration.
The SDA, which oversees the PWSA program, mandated the use of a standardized Optical Communication Terminal protocol to ensure compatibility and seamless data exchange between satellites from different manufacturers. Laser communications are expected to offer faster and more secure data transmission compared to traditional radio frequency methods.