Current Trends in Space Optical Communication Around the World and Its R&D Activities in JAXA

Space optical communication has been considered one of the major candidates for high-rate data transmission and it reaches the practical stage to operate as a high-rate data transmission system. In this paper, the author reports the latest situation of space optical communication around the world, flight demonstrations, technological research and standardization. Research and development activities at Japan aerospace exploration agency (JAXA) are also presented.