NASA is presently overseeing a project to create the world's first free-space laser communications system that can be operated over a range much larger than the near-earth ranges that have been demonstrated to date. To be flown on the Mars Telecom Orbiter, planned for launch by NASA in 2009, it will demonstrate high-rate laser communications from Mars orbit to one of several planned earth receiver sites. To support 1-10 Mbps over the up to 400 million kilometer link, the system will make use of a high peak-power doped-fiber transmitter, a hybrid pointing and tracking system, high efficiency modulation and coding techniques, photon-counting detectors, and novel optical collector architectures that can point near the sun. The project is being undertaken by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), MIT Lincoln Laboratory (MIT/LL), and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).


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    Title :

    MLCD: overview of NASA's Mars laser communications demonstration system


    Contributors:

    Conference:

    Free-Space Laser Communication Technologies XVI ; 2004 ; San Jose,Ca,United States


    Published in:

    Publication date :

    2004-06-16





    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



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