Fibertek has developed a ground based high-power (7 kW) optical communication uplink laser to support NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s (JPL) Deep Space Optical Communication (DSOC) program. The uplink laser assembly (ULA) provides a beacon laser and Binary PPM (BPPM) modulation signaling to the DSOC spacecraft terminal. Laser beacons with scalable power (multi-kW) are needed for Earth-to-asteroid, inter-planetary (Mars), and deep-space optical communication uplinks. This paper describes the ULA design, development, and performance verification testing. A single laser system was delivered in 2020 for performance testing and initial integration with the optical uplink telescope system. The full ULA laser was delivered and installed in NASA JPL’s Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory (OCTL) optical ground station facility in 2021. DSOC will fly on the NASA Psyche asteroid mission in 2022 and demonstrate deep space laser communications to earth. The ULA is an automated system with a comprehensive user interface that commands and controls ten (10) individual pulsed Yb fiber lasers. The individual lasers are incoherently combined and propagated to the Psyche satellite. ULA commands and monitors the performance of each individual laser, provides redundancy for high availability, and provides multiple safety interlocks to safeguard equipment and personnel. Each Yb fiber laser is collimated individually with a beam quality of M2 < 1.2 at 1064 nm in a pulsed PPM format with 2.7 kW of peak power. This paper describes the DSOC requirements and provides performance verification data.
Fibertek reports on the design and performance of two high power ruggedized Thulium fiber laser systems designed for spaceborne and airborne applications. The spaceflight system is a 100 W average power, linearly polarized, 1940 nm thulium doped fiber laser (TDFL) packaged in a hermetic 11-liter module. The airborne system is an all-fiber, narrowlinewidth, master oscillator power amplifier architecture with staged thulium fiber amplifiers with 80 W peak power and 20 W average power in a quasi-continuous temporal waveform. The airborne laser includes programmable digital phase codes with bit rates up to several GHz. We will discuss the overall system performance and environmental qualification testing of both systems.
Fibertek has designed and is building a spaceflight (TRL 5-6) high-efficiency, high reliability (97.2% for 5-year mission) 100 W average, 1940 nm thulium doped fiber laser (TDFL) meeting all requirements for a NASA Earth Science spaceflight 2 μm Ho:YLF pump laser. These include polarization extinction ratio <16dB, diffraction limited beam quality, narrow linewidth (0.35nm) and >50% optical to optical efficiency. High reliability laser package, optimized for space environment and SWAP has size 10.6”x13.8”x4.4”and weight 30lbs. A summary of laser package design is presented, including structural and thermal analysis. Preliminary environmental testing results of the space laser are also presented. A spaceflight 100 W PM Tm laser provides a path to space for a pulsed, Q-switched 2 μm Ho:YLF laser with ~80 mJ/pulse at 100-200 Hz.
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