A Bitcoin Lightning fee request has been relayed by a geostationary satellite tv for pc after which paid, in what seems to be the primary public demonstration of a Lightning bill transmitted “by precise house.”
Bitcoin Lightning Blasts Into Space
The experiment, carried out by the X consumer “Printer” (@Printer_Gobrrr), uplinked a Lightning bill as a picture to the QO-100 (Es’hail-2) newbie radio transponder and downlinked it again to Earth, the place it was decoded and settled over the Lightning Network. “Achievement unlocked: Received and paid the primary lighting [sic] bill which was despatched by precise house,” the consumer wrote on Sept. 9, 2025.
Achievement unlocked: Received and paid the primary lighting bill which was despatched by precise house. pic.twitter.com/9zq5SYnAWK
— Printer ⚡ (@Printer_Gobrrr) September 9, 2025
Unlike earlier satellite-based Bitcoin milestones that centered on on-chain transactions or blockchain distribution, the novelty right here is Lightning-specific: the fee request itself—encoded as a BOLT11 bill and rendered as a QR picture—was delivered by way of satellite tv for pc slightly than the terrestrial web.
According to technical descriptions, the method started with a pockets producing a Lightning bill. That bill was transformed to a picture and injected into an AMSAT-DL Multimedia HS Modem, which digitally modulated and uplinked the file to QO-100’s wideband newbie transponder.
The satellite tv for pc rebroadcast the information again to Earth; the downlink was decoded, the QR scanned, and the Lightning fee executed usually. In different phrases, the settlement path remained Lightning’s customary community, however the “last-mile” supply of the bill was absolutely off-grid.
QO-100 (Es’hail-2) is a geostationary satellite tv for pc positioned over 25.5°E with newbie S-band uplink and 10 GHz downlink transponders that cowl a footprint spanning Europe, Africa, the Middle East and elements of Asia—making it a favourite platform for newbie radio digital experiments. The use of its wideband digital transponder for file/picture transmission is per AMSAT-DL’s steering for experimental digital modulation on QO-100.
The demonstration underscores a broader theme that’s been growing for years: satellite tv for pc infrastructure can harden Bitcoin’s communications layer towards last-mile failures, censorship, and catastrophe situations.
Blockstream’s Satellite community, for instance, constantly broadcasts the Bitcoin blockchain all over the world, permitting nodes to remain in sync with out a terrestrial connection; builders may pay Lightning invoices to broadcast arbitrary messages over that community by way of the Satellite API. Today’s Lightning-over-satellite bill provides a complementary functionality: off-grid dissemination of fee requests, not simply blocks or messages.
It additionally invitations cautious parsing. While headlines describe a “Lightning fee despatched by way of satellite tv for pc,” the structure proven signifies that what traveled by house was the bill, not the channel-routed fee itself. Once decoded, a pockets nonetheless wanted regular Lightning connectivity—direct or by way of a routing node—to settle the bill earlier than it expired. That distinction issues for reliability claims and for evaluating what elements of the funds stack can function throughout web outages.
Bitcoin’s History In Outer Space
Historically, Bitcoin’s “house” experiments have ranged from block broadcasts to in-orbit signing. In August 2020, SpaceChain executed a multi-signature Bitcoin transaction utilizing {hardware} aboard the International Space Station, illustrating that private-key operations might be anchored off-planet.
Blockstream’s satellite tv for pc service, in the meantime, has matured right into a 24/7 world broadcast of the Bitcoin blockchain with developer tooling. The Lightning bill relay by QO-100 slots into that lineage as the primary broadly publicized Lightning-specific satellite tv for pc hop.
There are sensible constraints. QO-100’s footprint doesn’t cowl the Americas, and lawful use of newbie transponders requires adherence to band plans and licensing in every jurisdiction. The {hardware} profile—parabolic dish, RF front-end, and specialised modem—places this squarely within the “fanatic” tier for now.
Lightning-specific issues persist as properly: invoices are time-limited; channel liquidity and route availability nonetheless govern fee success; and any actually “air-gapped” settlement would require further relays or satellite-capable Lightning networking past immediately’s proof-of-concept.
Still, the sign is evident: Bitcoin’s communications resiliency retains increasing. With satellites broadcasting blocks, APIs that settle for Lightning for satellite tv for pc message uplinks, and now a public demo of a Lightning bill delivered by house and efficiently paid, the system is incrementally decoupling itself from single factors of terrestrial failure. Whether for catastrophe restoration, censorship resistance, or just engineering curiosity, the frontier of off-grid Bitcoin simply pushed slightly farther into orbit.
At press time, BTC traded at $114,266.
Featured picture created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
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