Optical Communication on SmallSats – Enabling the Next Era in Space Science

Workshop Overview:

In the few years since the 2012 KISS (Keck Institute for Space Studies) workshop on Small Satellites: A Revolution in Space Science, a near-frenzied growth has taken place in SmallSat missions and capabilities. The functionality of CubeSats (< 10 kg) and SmallSats (< 200 kg) is increasing, providing the opportunity to achieve a wide spectrum of scientific objectives on these relatively low-cost/low-risk platforms. These spacecraft today rely on RF communication systems, which, despite their maturity and small footprint, cannot keep up with the growing demand for data, nor satisfy the various government controls on frequency and bandwidth for the radio frequency spectrum. Therefore, highly compact laser communication systems are being pursued because of their potential to return 100-1000x more data than the current options.

This study will bring together space scientists, technologists, and mission designers across two workshops to understand the current limitations faced by SmallSat science missions stemming from the communication bottleneck, and together craft novel technical approaches for optical data transfer that significantly enhances the quality and volume of data returned by these missions. The overarching theme is to identify the most logical development path for optical communication instruments, in order to retire the key risks associated with this technology and ensure that it will meet the needs of SmallSat customers and be competitive with their RF counterparts. Resource-efficiency will also be evaluated for these two options in different regions of space to determine the ranges where one holds a clear advantage over the other. For example, many deep space SmallSat missions may only be achieved through creative laser communication where RF bent-pipe alternatives are not available.

This program will be driven by a rich cross-fertilization of the various contributors’ backgrounds and motivations to define new compelling science that is realizable by utilizing many existing ground and space optical facilities combined with achievable optical communication flight systems. While serving to initiate many near-term revolutionary SmallSat mission concepts, the concrete results that blossom from this symposium will clearly guide and impact longer-term strategies for supporting large-scale space optical communication architectures.

Team Leads

Suzana Sburlan

JPL
Fiona Harrison

Caltech
Brian Grefenstette

Caltech
Renny Fields

The Aerospace Corporation

Derek Barnes — MIT
Kerri Cahoy — MIT
Alberto Carrasco-Casado — National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
Emily Clements — MIT
Sam Dolinar — JPL
Renny Fields — The Aerospace Corporation
Peter Goorjian — NASA Ames Research Center
Varoujan Gorjian — JPL
Brian Grefenstette — Caltech
Brian Gunter — Georgia Institute of Technology
Fiona Harrison — Caltech
Travis Imken — JPL
Maxim Khatsenko — MIT
Ryan Kingsbury — Planet Labs
David Klumpar — Montana State University
Michael Krainak — NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Michael Küeppers — European Space Agency
Joe Kusters — JPL
Myron Lee — MIT
Rachel Morgan — MIT
Dhack Muthulingam — JPL
Joseph (Ed) Riedel — JPL
Kathleen Riesing — MIT
Bryan Robinson — MIT
Darren Rowen — The Aerospace Corp.
Suzana Sburlan — JPL
Joel Shields — JPL
Harlan Spence — University of New Hampshire
Morio Toyoshima — National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
Hua Xie — JPL

Presentations

Speaker	Affiliation	Presentation
Renny Fields	The Aerospace Corporation	Small Sat Lasercom (1.9 MB .pdf)
Michael Küeppers	European Space Agency	Introduction to Optical Communications for Satellites (1.7 MB .pdf) (video) (939 KB .pdf)
Bryan Robinson	MIT	Optical Communication Flight Systems (63.45 MB .pdf) (video)
Harlan Spence	University of New Hampshire	Optical Communications for SmallSats and CubeSats or "Everything you always wanted to know about Small Enabling eXperiments" (3.4 MB .pdf) (video)
Morio Toyoshima	National Institute of Information and Communications Technology	NICT's optical communication (3.34 MB .pdf)
Emily Clements	MIT	Laser Communications Downlink and Crosslink Designs for CubeSats (3.8 MB .pdf)
Varoujan Gorjian	JPL	Reverberation Mapping: Trading Time for Spatial Resolution (2.4 MB .pdf)
Ryan Kingsbury	Planet Labs	Communication Solutions (3.4 MB .pdf)
Michael Krainak	NASA Goddard Space Flight Center	Lasers and detectors for SmallSat Op2cal Communica2ons (6.55 MB .pdf)
Dhack Muthulingam	JPL	Power Subsystem Options for CubeSat OpComm (1.7 MB .pdf)
Darren Rowen	The Aerospace Corp.	Small Satellite Laser Comm Pointing (1.3 MB .pdf)
Joel Shields	JPL	Cubesat Optical Communications: ACS Hardware Testing at JPL (SSDT Task) and Acquisition and Tracking Simulation (DSOC) (9.3 MB .pdf)