Qualification testing of fiber-based laser transmitters and on-orbit validation of a commercial laser system

Abstract

Qualification testing of fiber based laser transmitters is required for NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications program to mature the technology for space applications. In the absence of fully space qualified systems, commercial systems have been investigated in order to demonstrate the robustness of the technology. To this end, a 2.5 W fiber based laser source was developed as the transmitter for an optical communications experiment flown aboard the ISS as a part of a technology demonstration mission. The low cost system leveraged Mil Standard design principles and Telcordia certified components to the extent possible and was operated in a pressure vessel with active cooling.The laser was capable of high rate modulation but was limited by the mission requirements to 50 Mbps for downlinking stored video from the OPALS payload, externally mounted on the ISS. Environmental testing and space qualification of this unit will be discussed along with plans for a fully space qualified laser transmitter.

Mid-wave and long-wave infrared transmitters and detectors for optical satellite communications—a review

“…More recently, the JAXA demonstrated on the SOLISS succeeded in a 1.5 µm bidirectional link from the ISS to a ground station, sending HD images over the system. The main factor in almost all cases limiting performance of the link is weather, and otherwise 1550 nm lasers would be an excellent candidate for optical SatCom [2,27,[46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53].…”