Not only do they have to point very accurately, both terminals will have to simultaneously point at where the opposite terminal was (for receiving) and will be (for transmitting) because of the light time delay. The distances will be so vast and so little light will arrive at Palomar that they will have to employ a superconducting (cooled to a fraction of a Kelvin) nanowire single photon detector. The modulation format is orders of magnitude more efficient (from an energy per bit perspective) than Kuiper or Starlink even though the data rate is (necessarily) lower.
Artemis II is scheduled to use the same modulation format and could use the same uplink and downlink terminals. JPL is building a "hybrid" Ka/X-band/optical terminal in the desert in Goldstone that may be able to let Palomar spend more time on astronomy.
Do you have specs on the starlink or kuiper laser terminals? SpaceX has been hush hush about the former and I didn’t even think kuiper had anything for laser comms yet.
This system probably isn't very comparable to the Starlink space lasers. Because of scale, Starlink is very heavily optimized for cost, while a bespoke deep space terminal probably doesn't even have cost as a factor.
It's one thing building (a pair of) working optical communications terminals. Designing it so you can build tens of thousands of them is a totally different game.
Not only do they have to point very accurately, both terminals will have to simultaneously point at where the opposite terminal was (for receiving) and will be (for transmitting) because of the light time delay. The distances will be so vast and so little light will arrive at Palomar that they will have to employ a superconducting (cooled to a fraction of a Kelvin) nanowire single photon detector. The modulation format is orders of magnitude more efficient (from an energy per bit perspective) than Kuiper or Starlink even though the data rate is (necessarily) lower.
Artemis II is scheduled to use the same modulation format and could use the same uplink and downlink terminals. JPL is building a "hybrid" Ka/X-band/optical terminal in the desert in Goldstone that may be able to let Palomar spend more time on astronomy.