Results from a Lunar Laser Communication Experiment between NASA's LADEE Satellite and ESA's Optical Ground Station

Abstract

ESA’s optical ground station (OGS) participated in the Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration (LLCD) with the Laser Communication Space Terminal (LLST) onboard NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environmental Explorer (LADEE) satellite. The experiment demonstrated the capabilities of optical communication and of inter-agency cross-support for optical communication links. The OGS experimental campaign, which started on October 26 and lasted until November 20, consisted of four days of bidirectional link sessions followed by three days of no operation. Each individual link session lasted approximately 20 minutes and was repeated after two hours. Despite non optimal weather conditions multiple link sessions were performed. The paper describes the design of the transmit laser and data generation system as well as the receiver system. A special chapter is dedicated to lessons learned from transmitter/receiver alignment problems, which prevented the demonstration of data uplink and ranging from the OGS. Several possibilities to solve the alignment problem are discussed and the finally implemented solution is described.