SFL and NOSA Achieve Laser-Based Sat-to-Ground Communications from a CubeSat

Toronto’s Space Flight Laboratory (SFL) and the Norwegian Space Agency (NOSA) say that they have successfully transferred data from a small CubeSat to a ground station using a laser-based optical link. This is a first for Dutch-built laser communications devices, and one of the few times that it’s been done on a small satellite and which posed a challenge with the various payloads.