A very interesting role the optics can play for modern satellites, which unfortunately isn't covered in the article, is using light as communication media between satellites or between ground stations and satellites. Some NASA experiments have shown that optical communication systems can present a range of interesting features, which may be of interest even to the designers of small satellites.
The optical comms market is quite dynamic at the moment, There are a number of ground stations being deployed around the world, in addition to terminals for satellites being brought to market for ground communication and inter-satellite links (ISL).
