Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe & European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO/Europe-EQEC)
Polarization-Encoded BB84 Quantum Key Distribution for the Nano-Satellite Mission QUBE-II
Michael Steinberger, Michael Auer, Adomas Baliuka, Moritz Birkhold, Harald Weinfurter, Lukas Knips
Abstract
Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) is a method to securely share secret keys between two parties via a quantum channel. Our QUBE mission [1], launched in summer 2024, is a pathfinder mission to test the suitability of components for economic global-scale QKD based on CubeSats. QUBE and its successor QUBE-II [1]–[3] are joint research projects by the German Aerospace Center Institute of Communications and Navigation (DLR-IKN), the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (FAU), the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light (MPL), Zentrum fur Telematik (ZfT), OHB System AG, and the Ludwig Maximilian University Munich (LMU).