Will Provide High Speed Laser Communications Of Large Volumes Of Data
EDRS-A, the first relay satellite in the SpaceDataHighway program (also called EDRS), will be launched to geostationary orbit on January 28th 2016 (Baikonur time). The SpaceDataHighway will provide high speed laser communications in space of up to 1.8 Gigabit per second. This major program, which cost nearly €500M (approx $544 million) to develop, is the result of a public-private partnership (PPP) between the European Space Agency (ESA) and Airbus Defense and Space.