Thales Alenia Space<\/b> and Hispasat <\/b>initiated the development, manufacturing, verification and validation phase of the first QKD-GEO prototype, the companies announced Jan. 21. <\/p>\n
The QKD-GEO mission, which stands for quantum key distribution, is set to last 24 months, aims to develop components for a future quantum key distribution system from Geostationary Orbit (GEO), including a quantum payload for a geostationary satellite and the associated ground segment. The ground segment will consist of optical stations with telescopes for receiving space-transmitted photons and recovering keys, along with an operations center to manage system activities.<\/p>\n
The Spanish Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures initiated the project, which is funded by European funds from the Recovery, Transformation, and Resilience Plan. The QKD-GEO mission has a budget of 103.5 million euros ($109 million).<\/p>\n
QKD-GEO has completed the initial four-month system design phase.<\/p>\n
A field test campaign is planned between the Spanish islands of La Palma and Tenerife, covering a 140-km atmospheric link. These tests will validate the ground segment and quantum payload functionality under representative conditions before implementing the operational mission in orbit. <\/p>\n
Hispasat CEO, Miguel \u00c1ngel Panduro, stated: \u201cThe establishment of encryption keys through a quantum protocol is going to represent a paradigm shift in the secure communications of the future, where space and satellites will be configured as the ideal infrastructure for their transmission over long distances.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thales Alenia Space and Hispasat initiated the development, manufacturing, verification and validation phase of the first QKD-GEO prototype, the companies announced Jan. 21. The QKD-GEO mission, which stands for quantum key distribution, is set to last 24 months, aims to develop components for a future quantum key distribution system from Geostationary Orbit (GEO), including a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":49796,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49795","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49795"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49795"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49795\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49796"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49795"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49795"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49795"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}