It is operating only when it can be pointed towards Earth, while also avoiding the Sun, which did not happen during the flyby.

The laser is on one side of Orion, and when that side is not oriented towards Earth for various reasons, the optical communications cannot be used.

For continuous communications, at least when there is no interposed body, like the Moon, multiple lasers located around Orion would be needed to ensure coverage. When by the far side of the Moon, a relay orbiting around the Moon would be needed.

i heard mention of 100 megabit. they downloaded 50GB of data the night after the flyby. they probably keep downloading as much as they can. and they still need to sift through all that to find the pictures worth publishing. they could do a data dump, but that's not interesting for the general public. the stuff is coming. slowly.

Doesn't that require line of sight with limited receivers available? Maybe the current positioning is preventing it until the constellation changes. With the constellation that is the craft in respect to the two ground stations in a narrow patch of the US. I could not find anything about throughput rates except for the theoretical maximum but I also suspect that max is only in LEO.