Deep-space Optical Terminals (DOT) Systems Engineering

The research described in this publication was carried out by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. © 2010 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged. Recently a conceptual design study titled Deep-space Optical Terminals (DOT) was completed for a deep-space optical communication technology demonstration in the 2018 timeframe. This article provides an overview of the system engineering portion of the study. The Level 1 requirements received from the NASA Space Communications and Navigation Program Manager emphasized an order of magnitude higher data rate from Mars closest range relative to the Ka-band telecommunication system flown on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) mission but utilizing comparable mass and power. The system-level concept design motivated by this driving requirement and reported here describes link performance of 267 Mb/s from 0.42 AU within an allocated mass and power of 38 kg and 110 W. Furthermore, the concept design addresses link closure at the farthest Mars range of 2.7 AU. Maximum uplink data rates of 292 kb/s and ranging with 30-cm precision are also addressed.

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