The Mars laser communication demonstration

Author

Townes, Stephen A. ; Edwards, Bernard L. ; Biswas, Abhijit ; Bold, David R. ; Bondurant, Roy S. ; Boroson, Don ; Burnside, Jamie W. ; Caplan, David O. ; DeCew, Alan E. ; DePaula, Ramon ; Fitzgerald, Richard J. ; Khatri, Farzana I. ; McIntosh, Alexander K.

Author_Institution

Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Technol., Pasadena, CA, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2004

fDate

6-13 March 2004

Firstpage

1180

Abstract

This paper provides the status of the Mars laser communication demonstration project, a joint project between NASA´s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), the California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory (MIT/LL). It reviews the current ideas/designs for the flight and ground segments, the critical technologies required, and the concept of operations. The laser communication (lasercom) flight terminal be flown on the Mars Telecom Orbiter (MTO) to be launched by NASA in 2009, and demonstrate a technology which has the potential of vastly improving NASA´s ability to communicate throughout the solar system.

Keywords

Mars; optical communication equipment; optical links; space communication links; Mars Telecom Orbiter; Mars laser communication demonstration project; laser communication flight terminal; lasercom; Earth; Instruments; Laser modes; Laser radar; Mars; NASA; Paper technology; Propulsion; Space missions; Space technology;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Aerospace Conference, 2004. Proceedings. 2004 IEEE

ISSN

1095-323X

Print_ISBN

0-7803-8155-6

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/AERO.2004.1367717

Filename

1367717