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Canceled TRL 5 (started at 3, targeting 5)
Explore a spiral scaling approach to arraying and provide ability to rapidly insert downlink arraying capability using potentially available optical telescopes in the DSOC mission timeframe. An array of small optical re- ceivers is proposed as an alterna- tive to a single large optical re- ceiver for high-data-rate communications in NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). Be- cause the telescope for a single receiver capable of satisfying DSN requirements must be greater than 10 m in diameter, the design, building, and testing of the telescope would be very difficult and expensive.
Improved optical comm link performance. The pro- posed array would utilize com- mercially available telescopes of 1-m or smaller diameter and, therefore, could be developed and verified with considerably less difficulty and expense.
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