The past decade saw fights over orbital planes and spectrum bands for delivering inflight internet services. The next battle could be between optical and radio frequency links, and the laser option has passed the proof-of-concept phase. A demonstration in December 2025 saw TNO and Airbus collaborate to deliver a laser-based communication link between an aircraft and a satellite in geosynchronous orbit.
Establishing laser links between moving targets at this distance is technically very challenging. Continuous movements, platform vibrations and atmospheric disturbances require extreme precision. – François Lombard, Head of Connected Intelligence at Airbus Defence and Space.
The test flight saw 31 connections established between the aircraft and the TDP 1 payload, orbiting on the Alphasat (a/k/a Inmarsat-4A/F4) satellite. Since its launch in 2013 Alphasat has provided data relay services via the laser link for earth observation satellites in the LEO orbital plane. This test moves that link a few hundred miles closer to earth, adding environmental challenges to the connection.
Seven of the test connections were dedicated to data transfers. The groups report performance of 2.6 Gbps with “several minutes of uninterrupted bit-error-free communication, which is unprecedented for this application.”
A new constellation of satellites supporting these speeds would also require significant downlink capacity to complete the link to terrestrial networks. Alphasat uses Ka-band spectrum for that link today. A broader implementation, with multiple multi-gigabit laser links might also require a shift in spectrum or technology there. But even the ViaSat-3 constellation with its terabit-per-second architecture is using Ka-band for downlink, suggesting it is possible without too much changing.
Lasers do not overcome the latency lag of GEO orbits. But TNO sees opportunity to adapt the technology to LEO satellites. The ability of the system to adjust the laser nearly instantaneously means an aircraft can repoint to a rising LEO satellite on the horizon rapidly, similar to ESAs in the RF-based communications world.
And then there’s the terminal. This test was very much a theoretical hardware implementation on the aircraft. A cabin full of test and control equipment would not fly, as it were, for a real on-board system. And this industry has spent plenty of time talking about production-ready hardware that’s “just a couple years away” and easy to develop because “its just physics.”
It was just one test flight, for now. Swapping to this technology would require new satellite constellations in orbit and productization of the terminal hardware. That’s far more likely in the government sector than commercial, at least to start.
But the technology can work, and does not face the same capacity or interference limits as radio spectrum links used today. That’s pretty nifty.
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