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Star Tracker Based ATP System Conceptual Design and Pointing Accuracy EstimationA star tracker based beaconless (a.k.a. non-cooperative beacon) acquisition, tracking and pointing concept for precisely pointing an optical communication beam is presented as an innovative approach to extend the range of high bandwidth (> 100 Mbps) deep space optical communication links throughout the solar system and to remove the need for a ground based high power laser as a beacon source. The basic approach for executing the ATP functions involves the use of stars as the reference sources from which the attitude knowledge is obtained and combined with high bandwidth gyroscopes for propagating the pointing knowledge to the beam pointing mechanism. Details of the conceptual design are presented including selection of an orthogonal telescope configuration and the introduction of an optical metering scheme to reduce misalignment error. Also, estimates are presented that demonstrate that aiming of the communications beam to the Earth based receive terminal can be achieved with a total system pointing accuracy of better than 850 nanoradians (3 sigma) from anywhere in the solar system.
Document ID
20070030939
Acquisition Source
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Document Type
Preprint (Draft being sent to journal)
External Source(s)
Authors
Orfiz, Gerardo G.
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Lee, Shinhak
(Jet Propulsion Lab., California Inst. of Tech. Pasadena, CA, United States)
Date Acquired
August 24, 2013
Publication Date
January 26, 2006
Subject Category
Communications And Radar
Meeting Information
Meeting: SPIE Photonics West: Free Space Laser Conference Technologies XVIII
Location: San Jose, CA
Country: United States
Start Date: January 2, 2006
Sponsors: International Society for Optical Engineering
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other
Keywords
star tracker
pointing accuracy
deep-space optical communications
acquisition, tracking, and pointing system (ATP)

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