Sony establishes Space Communications Corporation; to connect satellites via space lasers

Sony, on June 2, announced the formation of its new company - Sony Space Communications Corporation (SSC) through its subsidiary Sony Corporation of America -- which would develop devices to help small satellites connect with each other using lasers. Meant to conduct space optical communications, Kyohei Iwamoto, President of SSC, explained the need for establishing Sony’s new subsidiary. Iwamoto said that the number of satellites in the low-Earth orbit (LEO) is growing which in turn is driving the amount of data used in orbit each year.

He added that the number of satellites in orbit has crossed the 12,000 mark and will increase in the future but the number of available radio waves remains limited.

"Low Earth Orbit satellites need to communicate with the ground, so a large number of communications facilities are required for real-time communications, which is problematic because these satellites must pass directly over a ground station to communicate with it", Iwamoto said in a statement. "Additionally, the need for frequency licenses for radio waves and the requirement for lower power consumption of communication equipment needed by smaller satellites, like microsatellites, are also issues to be addressed."

Purpose of SSC

The purpose of SSC is basically to solve these aforementioned issues and it plans to do so by developing small optical communication devices that use space lasers to connect micro-satellites in orbit. SSC said that it would provide its equipment to companies currently working on satellite development to "realize high-speed communications with small devices." Notably, this is difficult to achieve with conventional radio communications because this method requires a large antenna and a higher power output.

SSC says that it also aims to enable real-time communications from anywhere on the ground to any satellite in space by establishing optical communications between the satellites and ground station as well as among the in-orbit satellites. "Optical communications are also easier to implement than traditional radio frequency communications as they do not require the certain types of licenses that radio communication needs", the company said in an official statement.

Sony said that it has been testing laser technology in order to enable high-speed data communications by micro-satellites over long distances. In 2020, it partnered with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and successfully transmitted high-definition image data through a bidirectional laser communications link from the International Space Station.