Mr. Bulent Altan, Chief Executive Officer, Mynaric, USA

The Optical Communication Workshop (OCW) is a multinational military, civilian, and commercial industry forum, focused on discussing and enabling the continued advancement of laser satellite communications (SATCOM) technologies across space and ground segments.

The workshop is sponsored by The Aerospace Corporation and complements national/international optical communication conferences. Aerospace received positive feedback from the inaugural OCW event in 2019, and hosted this year OCW 2020 as an online event on Oct. 27 & 28, to foster further collaboration in developing of future laser communication capability for space applications.

The three major themes for OCW 2020 are market & production, science & technology, and governance. Speakers from key stakeholder community (United States Space Force, Space Development Agency, NASA, Industry and International partners) presented solutions and recent progress on the following topics: standards & interoperability, international activities and coordination, and commercial and government common interests. A major objective for the workshop was to provide an opportunity for the greater optical communications enterprise to come together in 2020!