October’s lecture is now available on the Society’s YouTube channel, VK2MB-TV.
Free Space Optics (FSO) uses light propagating in free space to wirelessly transmit data for telecommunications. “Free space” means air, outer space, vacuum, or something similar.

This lecture by John Cummins highlights some of the engineering challenges in designing and building a commercial laser communications product and how they have been solved with the Centauri Laser Terminal from Transcelestial Technologies.

The talk also covers a next generation terminal currently in research. It will use FSO between ground stations on earth and a constellation of satellites in orbit to enable high bandwidth, low latency communication to any location.