Thales Alenia Space will provide the Optical Inter Satellite Links for Telesat’s Lightspeed Low Earth Orbit 298-satellite constellation

June 11, 2021

As prime contractor for the construction of Telesat’s Lightspeed constellation, Thales Alenia Space, a joint venture between Thales (67%) and Leonardo (33%), is announcing today that the Optical Inter Satellite Links (OISL) on-board the Lightspeed satellites will be its advanced Optel-C product. Optical Inter Satellite Links will allow Lightspeed to provide global, mesh coverage around the world, including above the oceans and poles, with a high level of security for end-to-end services. Their use will optimize the ground segment with a lower number of gateway sites, more freedom on gateway locations, and the ability to deploy gateways incrementally as system loading increases.

The initial Lightspeed space segment will be comprised of 298 satellites. Telesat’s constellation satellites will deliver multiple terabits per second across the globe for secure, low-latency, high-performing broadband professional services.

The Optel-C product builds on more than 20 years’ experience from Thales Alenia Space in Switzerland in optical communications and space optoelectronics instruments covering engineering, design analysis and assembly integration & tests for opto-mechanics, electronics and photonics. The product consortium involves several partners in Italy, France, Canada, Switzerland and UK.

Optel-C is optimized for constellations, robust by design and based on proven terrestrial/submarine technology for communications photonics and mechatronics subsystems as well as on 1550 nm Commercial Off-The-Shelf solutions.

Complexity has been reduced to the minimum required to meet performance objectives, to optimize the price point of the product, and to achieve unit production throughput. The product provides a flexible accommodation and easy integration, thus accelerating the satellite assembly time, a key consideration for large scale constellations. The industrial challenge of such a high volume and high throughput production will benefit from the broad experience and proven capabilities of Thales in similar types of volume manufacturing in the defence domain and will be implemented in its Glasgow plant.