There are many applications where fibers are employed in space, such as fiber gyros and fiber sensors. Fiber lasers are becoming increasingly attractive for space for similar reasons, which are lightweight, small size and low power consumption. The majority of components used in such systems are commercial off-the-shelf parts that have been developed using technologies similar to those used in the development of parts for the fiber telecom market. Space however has environmental conditions that require further hardening of these parts. Accordingly, a generic qualification protocol is suggested for qualifying generic parts for space flight. This protocol is based on merging the qualification requirements for telecom, such as those by Telcordia, with the qualification for spaceflight, such as by NASA. A set of components (at 1064 nm) is chosen for testing the protocol. These include doped fibers, combiners, sources, pumps, isolators and fiber Bragg gratings. The scope of the vibration, thermal and radiation tests used to validate the protocol is limited to the environmental conditions of lower Earth orbit satellites, 100 to 1000km orbital altitude and up to 60 degrees inclination. Also presented in this paper is a summary of a thorough survey conducted for publications related to space qualification of fibers and lasers for space.
Overview of qualification protocol of fiber lasers for space applications
Solid State Lasers XV: Technology and Devices ; 2006 ; San Jose,California,United States
Proc. SPIE ; 6100
2006-02-22
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Fiber Laser Component Testing for Space Qualification Protocol Development
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