The European data relay system and Alphasat to T-AOGS space to ground links, status, and achievements in 2017

The paper reports on the deployment of the first commercial optical data relay system, the European Data Relay System (EDRS), the achieved performance so far, and the progress in the characterization of optical bi-directional space to ground links performed between the Laser Communication Terminal (LCT) on the Alphasat geostationary satellite and the transportable adaptive optics ground station (T-AOGS) currently co-located with the optical ground station from the European Space Agency (ESA) at Tenerife, Spain. Uplink results using homodyne binary phase shift keying at 1064 nm from the T-AOGS were examined. The performance of a packet erasure code according to the orange book CCSDS 131.5-O-1 optimized for the conditions of a laser uplink without adaptive optics correction of the phase front is analyzed.