4. Conclusion

Optical inter-satellite communications benefit from the extraordinary development of optoelectronic techniques for terrestrial fiber telecommunications, fax, videodisc, fiber sensors, and also for all the other industrial applications of the new diode-pumped solid-state lasers. It would be pointless to list all the applications involving lasers, high-performance detectors (low-noise photodiode mosaics, infrared, etc.), integrated optics components (guides, switches, etc.) or non-linear optics.

All these developments are of great benefit to space communications, as they lead to high performance and give us great hope for reliability and long life. The first Silex experimental project, though modest in terms of performance, opens the way to new missions: live transmission of very high data rates, without recourse to information compression techniques or on-board storage...