Boulder, Colorado-based Astarte Fibre Networks Inc says that it has been awarded a contract to install one of its Star-Switch photonic optical matrix switch at the Kennedy Space Center: the company describes its switches as the only commercially available completely photonic matrix switches: the signals passing through the switch remain in optical form, rather than being converted to electronic form; the particular version that the Space Centre plumped for can accept up to 16 fibre optic inputs; the technology, says the company, provides switching of optical signals that carry bandwidth in excess of 10GHz with less than 2dB of loss.
