signal is lost due to cloud cover. The OPALS experiment was launched on 18 April 2014 to the International Space Station (ISS) to further test the potential for using a laser to transmit data to Earth from space.

The first LEO-to-ground lasercom demonstration using a Japanese microsatellite (SOCRATES) was carried out by NICT in 2014, and the first quantum-limited experiments from space were done