An Optical Communications Pathfinder for the Next Generation Tracking and Data Relay Satellite

This paper provides an overview of NASA's 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). LCRD will provide a minimum of two years of high data rate optical communications services in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), demonstrating how optical communications can meet NASA’s and other agencies’ growing need for higher data rates. Two optical communications terminals will be flown on a SSL commercial communications satellite in GEO to be launched no earlier than December 2017, and will demonstrate a technology critical for NASA’s Next Generation Tracking and Data Relay Satellite. This paper will discuss the results of the recent Lunar Laser Communication Demonstration, describe the remaining challenges for an optical relay network, and discuss how the LCRD mission will be a pathfinder for that future system.