TL;DR the quantity is killing the quality. There are so many small cubesat-style missions that we're actually losing communications time with James Webb to keep track of them all. And Artemis is going to swamp everything with downlink data rates.
I worked at JPL, sometimes with the folks mentioned in this article. I suspect this is a money problem, not a technology problem. IIRC, everyone knows optical (laser) comms are going to carry a lot more load, and the DSN build-out plan already specs more ground-stations with smaller radii (better for closer tracking) vs larger dishes (better for voyager / juno style missions). There's also been commercial support (e.g., Amazon[1])
These folks know how to do it effectively and efficiently (and cheaply) just need the resources and permission.
I worked at JPL, sometimes with the folks mentioned in this article. I suspect this is a money problem, not a technology problem. IIRC, everyone knows optical (laser) comms are going to carry a lot more load, and the DSN build-out plan already specs more ground-stations with smaller radii (better for closer tracking) vs larger dishes (better for voyager / juno style missions). There's also been commercial support (e.g., Amazon[1])
These folks know how to do it effectively and efficiently (and cheaply) just need the resources and permission.
1. https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/amazon-launches-a...