Business Wire via AP
- A company developing Russia's answer to Elon Musk's Starlink said it completed its first tests.
- Bureau 1440, a Russian-owned project, said the trials were successful, with more to come.
- It uses the same approach as SpaceX's Starlink and other companies vying for the market.
A company developing Russia's answer to Elon Musk's Starlink said it has completed its first series of tests, using a laser inter-satellite link of its own design.
Bureau 1440, a project office for research on using low-earth orbit satellite systems for high-speed data transmission, shared the update in a Telegram post on Monday.
It said that more than 200 gigabytes of data was transferred at 10 gigabits per second, between spacecraft located more than 30 kilometers apart.
The tests were the company's first successful experience of domestic laser inter-satellite communication in space, it said, and confirmed the performance and potential of its technology.
It added that it was preparing dozens of new tests at a distance of hundreds of kilometers between satellites.
SpaceX's Starlink satellites operate in low-Earth orbit and also use inter-satellite laser links to pass data between one another.
This allows it to offer broad internet coverage around the world.
Russia has been banned from using Starlink, though reports suggest that Russian forces are getting the company's terminals through a complex black market and bringing them to the Ukrainian battlefield at scale.
The Russia-based company, formerly known as MegaFon 1440, announced its plan to invest the equivalent of $76 million in the development of a satellite data transmission system in 2020.
The company launched its first three satellites into orbit in 2023, according to the Russian business portal TAdviser.
In a Telegram post last month, the company said its goal was to create a broadband data service that would provide high-speed communications with low latency anywhere in the world — exactly like Space X's Starlink.
Its website touts the project as a revolution similar to Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite successfully launched into orbit in 1957.
Bureau 1440 didn't immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.
The company is one of several developing global high-speed internet access through satellite constellations in low Earth orbit.
In addition to Starlink, Amazon's Project Kuiper, Eutelsat's OneWeb, and Telesat's Lightspeed are also vying for the market.