On-Orbit Demonstration of 100 Gbps Optical Downlinks from the TBIRD Cubesat

In June 2022, NASA’s TeraByte Infrared Delivery (TBIRD) program successfully demonstrated 100 Gbps laser communications from low-Earth orbit to a ground.
The 3U communication terminal (hosted on a 6U nanosatellite) established downlinks during 5-minute passes over the ground station that resulted in the transfer of Terabyte-class data volumes. This paper provides an overview of the system architecture, operations, and link performance results.