To concurrently cope with the scarcity of RF frequency bands, the growing capacity demand and the required lower cost of the ground segment, Very High Throughput Satellites systems must rely on new technical solutions. Optical feeder links are considered as a promising alternative to surpass classical RF technology, offering assets inherent to optical technologies (large bandwidth, no frequency regulation, low beam divergence, components availability). Nevertheless the potential of this technology shall not conceal the remaining challenges to be overcome to make it relevant for operational missions: clouds, turbulence, power generation and high efficiency modulations. VERTIGO (Very High Throughput Satellite Ground Optical Link) is a 3-year H2020 project funded by the European commission and started mid-2019 focusing on the optical link itself regardless of site diversity aspect and aiming at demonstrating in ground demonstrations required technologies to implement very high capacity optical feeder links. In this paper we present the current status and perspectives of the project.