NASA’s New Deep Space Laser Communication 40 Times Bandwidth of Radio Communications

In late 2023, NASA tested a new hybrid laser/radio antenna to downlink data from 20 million miles (32 million kilometers) away at a rate of 15.63 megabits per second – about 40 times faster than radio frequency communications at that distance. On Jan. 1, 2024, the antenna downlinked a team photograph that had been uploaded …

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SpaceX Independent Investment Guide

Brian Wang, Nextbigfuture has worked with Spaced Ventures to create the SpaceX: The Independent Investment Guide. It is designed to be a fairly exhaustive look into SpaceX’s technology, products, services, and finances, based on deep research and publicly available information. This is primarily a factual snapshot of the business as it stands today. We don’t …

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Cheap, 9 Gbps Last Mile Free-space Optical Data Communication

Miniaturized FSO breakthrough unlocks high-speed wireless communication anywhere Researchers from Nanjing University (NJU) have developed a miniaturized FSO system that promises to revolutionize high-speed wireless communication. As reported in the Gold Open Access journal Advanced Photonics Nexus (APNexus), this remarkable system achieved an astonishing communication bandwidth of 9.16 gigabits per second (Gbps) over a 1-kilometer …

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Breaking Out of the Solar System With an Interstellar Fleet

There are many people who have the opinion about interstellar travel being impossible. They are looking at our current immature economy and immature space capability. They then extrapolate about some one off interstellar mission. We need to look at how humanity broke out of Europe and the Mediterranean Sea with a fleet of exploration ships. …

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SpaceX Starlink Satellite Direct to Cellphone Gets Second Phone Company

SpaceX has found its second partner for their upcoming Starlink-enabled direct satellite-to-cellular service. New Zealand’s telecommunications company, One NZ (formerly known as Vodafone), has announced it has signed an agreement with SpaceX to offer mobile coverage across the country, eliminating cellular dead zones. SpaceX announced the direct satellite-to-cellular service with T-mobile. T-Mobile has more than …

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ColdQuanta Atomic Clocks

Nextbigfuture interviewed Max Perez of ColdQuanta. Max Perez is the Vice President of Research and Security Solutions at ColdQuanta. ColdQuanta’s cold atom method is a transformational foundational technology platform: ColdQuanta creates ultra-high vacuum cells that are injected with atoms Using laser cooling, ColdQuanta cools the atoms to near absolute zero The system is kept at …

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100 Gigabit per Second Wireless P2P Communication is Near

BridgeComm, a leader in optical wireless communications, announced it has developed high-speed optical communications of speeds beyond 100GB per second and will offer point-to-point demos at the Hampton Inn in Sneads Ferry, NC, in conjunction with a global conference April 6-15. This project, which has already confirmed 100gbps connectivity in the lab, is enabled by …

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Dynamically Programmable Wireless 6G

A visionary EU 6G research project, called RISE-6G, will create next-generation wireless connectivity. RISE-6G will design, prototype and test smart and energy-sustainable technological advances based on reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) that will enable programmable control and shaping of the wireless propagation environment. They expect to deploy by 2030. They will use surfaces of diode-based antennas …

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Inflatable Antennas for High Data Rate Satellite and 5G Communications

Freefall Aerospace is a NASA NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) success story. The inflatable antenna system enables big data from cubesats and small low-cost spacecraft. The 3-dimensional phased array antenna technology can provide high data rate communication at virtually any frequency at a fraction of the size and cost of any existing solution. They have …

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Another 60 SpaceX Starlink Satellites and 100 Mbps User Download Speed Tests

SpaceX has tweeted out that Starlink is providing over 100 Mbps download speeds in user tests. They launched the twelfth batch of 60 Starlink satellites. The speed and low latency is fast enough to stream multiple HD movies at once and still have bandwidth to spare. It also can play any online game. Latency tests …

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