Laser communication hardware being built under funding from the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization will be flown on the Space Technology Research Vehicle 2 to be launched as part of Air Force mission TSX-5 in 1998. The flight hardware, which weighs 31.5 pounds and is designed for satellite-to-ground laser communications at data rates up to 1.24 Gb/s and ranges up to 2000 km, will be delivered to JPL for integration in March, 1997. It is hoped that a successful satellite demonstration will validate the capability and readiness of lasercom for inter-satellite crosslinks and low Earth Orbit satellite downlinks to the ground. This paper describes the hardware with photographs.
Description of STRV-2 lasercom flight hardware
Free-Space Laser Communication Technologies IX ; 1997 ; San Jose,CA,USA
Proc. SPIE ; 2990
1997-04-24
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Description of STRV-2 lasercom experimental operations
SPIE | 1997
|Results of the STRV-2 Lasercom Terminal Evaluation Tests
NTRS | 1998
|NTRS | 1993
|