Latest Changes to NASA's Laser Communication Relay Demonstration Project

Edwards, Bernard L ; Israel, David J ; Vithlani, Seema K

关键词: OPTICAL COMMUNICATION;    RADIO FREQUENCIES;    HIGH SPEED;    INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION;    SPACE COMMUNICATION;    RELAY SATELLITES;    GROUND STATIONS;    GEOSYNCHRONOUS ORBITS;    LOW EARTH ORBITS;    EXTREMELY HIGH FREQUENCIES;    NASA PROGRAMS;    RATES (PER TIME);    PROTOTYPES;   

RP-ID  :  GSFC-E-DAA-TN50575

学科分类：工程和技术（综合）

美国|英语

来源: NASA Technical Reports Server

【 摘 要 】

Over the last couple of years, NASA has been making changes to the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration Project (LCRD), a joint project between NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology (JPL), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory (MIT/LL). The changes made makes LCRD more like a future Earth relay system that has both high speed optical and radio frequency links. This will allow LCRD to demonstrate a more detailed concept of operations for a future operational mission critical Earth relay. LCRD is expected to launch in June 2019 and is expected to be followed a couple of years later with a prototype user terminal on the International Space Station. LCRD's architecture will allow it to serve as a testbed in space and this paper will provide an update of its planned capabilities and experiments.