Overview of the Ground‐to‐Orbit Lasercom Demonstration

Abstract

The Ground‐to‐Orbit Lasercom Demonstration conducted between the ETS‐VI spacecraft and the ground station at JPL's Table Mountain Facility, Wrightwood CA was the first ground‐to‐space two‐way optical communications experiment. The demonstration was conducted over a period of seven months and required simultaneous and cooperative operations by team members in Tokyo and California. A key objective was to measure the atmospheric attenuation and seeing during the demonstration to evaluate the performance of the optical link. The optical downlink telemetry provided information on the in‐orbit performance of ETS‐VI's laser communications equipment. Downlinked PN data enabled measurement of bit‐error rates. BERs as low as 10 ^{-4} were measured on the uplink and 10 ^{-5} on the downlink. Measured signal powers (corrected for measured atmospheric attenuation) agreed with theoretical predictions.