Laser Hack Dark Orbit | Tested

All but a handful of the satellites in orbit require a direct link to a ground station to provide internet. The eventual plan is to launch sats with laser links, that can communicate directly between satellites. There are just over a dozen of these already in orbit, serving a test deployment way out in the poles. -technology/2021/01/spacex-adds-laser-links-to-starlink-satellites-to-serve-earths-polar-areas/

The image below shows all the lasers bought and tested, ranging from small, pen-sized "pet" laser pointers, to a moderately larger firearm laser sight, to the largest models (30,000 mW) which were the size of a small flash light. We also tested a DC powered blue diode (far left) which required plug in power.

laser hack dark orbit | tested

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At night time and low light, it was just as easy to blind a camera. Because most cameras now use integrated IR, visible to the human eye, this red glow effectively works as a beacon at night. Additionally, while cameras adjusted exposure fairly quickly back to "normal" during the day when the laser was removed, at night it took several seconds longer for exposure to correct, darkening the scene (0.02 lux shown).

In another camera, the heat of the laser broke the image sensor, making the image useless. It did not seem to suffer from the same dead pixel issues of other cameras we tested, but then totally failed. 2ff7e9595c