Lunar Optical Communications Link Demonstration Between NASA's Ladee Spacecraft and ESA's Optical Ground Station

NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft has embarked the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory’s (LL) Lunar Lasercom Space Terminal (LLST) as a secondary payload and part of the Lunar Laser Communications Demonstration (LLCD) experiment. The LLST was operated on four out of every seven days for one month during the commissioning phase of the LADEE spacecraft in lunar orbit, and then again for a shorter period of time, after the end of the primary scientific mission. ESA's Optical Ground Station (OGS) on the Canary island of Tenerife was one of two secondary participating ground stations – together with JPLs Table Mountain facility – involved in the experiment. We present, from ESA's perspective, the Lunar Optical Communications Link (LOCL) project including first results and lessons learned of the short-duration experiment using the OGS. The success of LOCL is of strategic importance for ESA for the development of future optical communications over "deep-space" distances.