The Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration: NASA’s First Step Toward Very High Data Rate Support of Science and Exploration Missions

Abstract

Future NASA missions for both Science and Exploration will have needs for much higher data rates than are presently available, even with NASA's highly-capable Space-and Deep-Space Networks. As a first step towards this end, for one month in late 2013, NASA's Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) successfully demonstrated for the first time high-rate duplex laser communications between a satellite in lunar orbit, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), and multiple ground stations on the Earth. It constituted the longest-range laser communication link ever built and demonstrated the highest communication data rates ever achieved to or from the Moon.This report will summarize the main achievements of LLCD and put them in context of the near-term and long-term communications goals of NASA space missions.

High-rate 256+ Gbit/s laser communications for enhanced high-resolution imaging using space-based very long baseline interferometry (VLBI)

“…In addition, optical wavelengths are sensitive to atmospheric effects such as scintillation and fading that require compensation in order to deliver error-free data. These engineering challenges have been resolved in a variety of ways, with many demonstrations over the past two decades showing the capability and robustness of optical communications for space-to-space and space-to-ground links, (see, e.g., [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19]).…”

Lunar Gravitational-wave Antenna

“…Such transmission rates can in principle be achieved easily today even with direct transmission of sensors to Earth if power is available. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer in lunar orbit contained the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration, which demonstrated download transmission rates of about 600 Mbit s −1 with a total power consumption of ∼90 W (Boroson & Robinson 2014). More conventional X-band communication can achieve a few Mbits s −1 between Earth and Moon (Zhang et al 2019), while a ∼4 W X-band transmitter on CubeSats could achieve several × 10 kbit s −1 (Schaire et al 2017), which would still be enough to transmit the total data volume of LGWA with four stations.…”

Lunar Gravitational-Wave Antenna

“…Such transmission rates can in principle be achieved easily today even with direct transmission of sensors to the Earth if power is available. The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) in lunar orbit contained the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD), which demonstrated download transmission rates of about 600 Mbit/s with a total power consumption of ∼ 90 W [103]. More conventional X-band communication can achieve a few Mbit/s between Earth and Moon [104], while a ∼ 4 W X-band transmitter on CubeSats could achieve several 10 kbit/s [105], which would still be enough to transmit the total data volume of LGWA with 4 stations.…”