Quantum networking advances on Earth and in space

“Currently, the U.S. government is not investing in such testbeds or demonstrations, ensuring it will be a follower and not a leader in the development of technical advances in the field,” said a report released last year by the Quantum Economic Development Consortium, a global association of more than 250 government agencies, academic institutions, and businesses.

There is hope, however. For example, in September, Boeing announced that it is working on a quantum satellite, scheduled for launch in 2026. However, this satellite will only test entanglement swapping technology. That is a key step towards actual quantum communication, but it’s just a step. Actual quantum communication is still out of reach.

In fact, a quantum networking experiment was launched into space late last year, said Makan Mohageg, an applied quantum physicist at the company. The NASA JPL experiment, about the size of two cereal boxes, is the Space Entanglement and Annealing QUantum Experiment — SEAQUE — and arrived at the International Space Station in November. It was designed to test quantum transmitters and receivers in the stressful environment of outer space, and also to test new “self-healing” technology to allow lasers to recover from radiation damage.

“Good news,” Mohageg told conference attendees. “The entanglement source works, exactly the same as it worked on Earth.”