The US Army, NASA and a number of private companies are looking to develop green laser pointer satellites that offer significant bandwidth and low cost. Recently, American Aerospace announced that it has successfully conducted a test for NASA, which has a 50-fold higher output bandwidth than military satellites currently using radio waves.
The laser beam does not penetrate the atmosphere as easily as a radio, but it is also more difficult to intercept. Because of the wide distribution of radio waves, any third party can receive or transmit signals for interference. However, to block the laser, the direct connection between the transmitter and the receiver must be cut off, which is more difficult.
Many departments are interested in green laser pointer (optical) communications, and NASA's Optical Communications and Sensing Demonstrator (OCSD) emits laser light into the atmosphere. The laser beam comes from a pair of "cube satellites" in the near-Earth orbit (AeroCube-7B and AeroCube-7C, respectively), each weighing only 5 pounds (about 2.27 kilograms). From a military perspective, in the future space war, a large number of small cheap satellites are more difficult to destroy than a few expensive satellites.
Although NASA is interested in testing, it has not implemented direct communication from one satellite to another, nor has it tested the uplink from the ground base station to the satellite in the opposite direction. This requires new hardware, including ground terminal equipment and an efficient receiver that can be mounted on a "cube satellite."