ESA-ESOC together with KSAT is integrating a network of optical ground stations owned by partners aiming to solve the chicken and egg problem that there is currently no commercial optical ground station capacity available.
The half meter aperture KSAT station is designed and optimized together with the partner ASTELCO Systems to provide optical ground station service at costs comparable to radio-frequency service. The design follows a multi-mission and low-complexity approach. This is done by making use of observatory-grade optical telescopes.
The advantage of this approach is that it allows quick implementation of additional systems when needed. The design can be extended to larger telescopes of up to around 1.8 meter enabling Gigabit-per-second communications for lunar distances. The KSAT optical ground station is equipped with a baseband unit (modem) developed by Work Microwave to support data-rates of up to 3 Gbps. Other customer provided baseband units can also be supported.