Ground laser receivers for the deep space optical communications demonstration: performance and lessons learned from first year of operations
The Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) project has concluded its first year of operations, demonstrating high-photon-efficiency downlinks from 163 kbps to 267 Mbps at ranges from 0.1 to 2.7 AU. Here we report on the performance of the primary Ground Laser Receiver (GLR), installed at Palomar Observatory’s 5-m Hale telescope, as well as the secondary receiver, installed at Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Optical Communication Telescope Laboratory (OCTL) where it sharesthe 1-m aperture with DSOC’s Ground Laser Transmitter (GLT). We also discuss lessons learned from operations.
Authors
- Emma E. Wollman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5474-3745)
- Roger O’Brient (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4987-6375)
- Abhijit Biswas (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9436-0557)
- Gregory Miles
- Nathaniel Richard
- Jason P. Allmaras (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9621-289X)
- Vachik Garkanian
- Ryan Rogalin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1242-8659)
- Matthew D. Shaw (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5037-3740)
- Seán M. Meenehan
- Daniel Cho (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4719-8141)
- Erik Alerstam
- Angel E. Velasco (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0004-4057-4188)
- Meera Srinivasan
- Edwin Grigorian
Institutions
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US)
Publication Details
- Published
- 2025-03-19
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1117/12.3043323
- Citations
- 3
- Primary Topic
- Optical Wireless Communication Technologies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 2.19