Image: Reuters Berita 24 English - Sony announced on Thursday the formation of a new firm that would design and manufacture gadgets that wi...
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| Image: Reuters |
Berita 24 English - Sony announced on Thursday the formation of a new firm that would design and manufacture gadgets that will allow small satellites in orbit to interact with one another via laser beams, a foray into the fast-growing space industry.
Sony Space Communications Corp, which was established on Wednesday, would use laser technology to bypass a radio frequency congestion. The devices will be used to communicate between space satellites and satellites communicating with ground stations.
The business did not specify when it hopes to have its first commercial gadget functioning in space, if it already has customers lined up, or how much money it has put into the technology so far.
There are currently around 12,000 satellites in orbit, a number that is expected to rapidly rise in the coming years as rocket companies reduce the cost of launching things into space and companies like Amazon and SpaceX build massive networks of low-earth satellites to carry internet communications around the world.
"The amount of data consumed in orbit is likewise expanding year by year," the new company's president, Kyohei Iwamoto, said in a statement. "However, the number of usable radio waves is restricted."
SpaceX manufactures its own laser communications devices and used them on its Starlink satellites late last year for the first time.
One of Sony's first successful experiments took place in 2020, when it transferred high-definition visual data from the International Space Station to a ground station in Japan using lasers.
