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Future Very High Throughput Satellite Systems (VHTS) will perform at several Tbit/s throughput and thus face the challenge of limited feeder-link spectrum. Whereas with conventional RF feeder links several tens of ground gateway stations would be required, the total capacity can alternatively be linked through a single optical ground station using Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) techniques as known from terrestrial fiber communications. While intermittent link blockage by clouds can be compensated by ground station diversity, the optical uplink signal is directly affected by scintillation and beam wander induced by the atmospheric index-of-refraction turbulence. The transmission system must be capable to mitigate these distortions by according high-speed tracking and fading compensation techniques. We report on the design of a near-ground long-range (10km) atmospheric transmission test …