Starlink builds a space laser mesh and connects aviation

Starlink satellites are interconnected by optical inter-satellite links — “space lasers” — with thousands of connections moving on the order of tens of petabytes per day directly through the constellation. This laser mesh lets Starlink route traffic over oceans and remote regions with no ground stations, and underpins low-latency service almost anywhere on Earth.

That backbone enabled Starlink Aviation: dozens of airlines now offer fast, often free in-flight Wi-Fi over Starlink, along with maritime and enterprise services. It turned satellite internet from a slow last resort into connectivity good enough for streaming at 35,000 feet and in the middle of the ocean.

The laser mesh is a genuine engineering milestone in its own right: keeping thousands of fast-moving satellites pointing optical links at one another across thousands of kilometres, to route traffic with minimal ground infrastructure, had never been done at this scale. It is also what makes Starlink strategically resilient — data can flow through space even where an adversary or a natural disaster has severed terrestrial cables and knocked out ground stations, a property no fibre network or geostationary competitor can offer.