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In this talk, we describe our experimental progress toward a laboratory link demonstration using electronically programmable beam steering metasurfaces as a proof-of-concept for implementing optical communications links with no moving parts. First, we fabricate plasmonic gate-tunable conducting oxide metasurfaces and study the beam quality of the light reflected from the metasurface. Next, we describe the design of a free-space optical communications transceiver and detail our experimental progress. The developed technologies could be instrumental for implementing inter-satellite links as well as information networks on the Moon, Mars, and beyond, needed for robotic and/or human solar system exploration.