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Completed TRL 4 (started at 2, targeting 4)
This CIF will develop the technology for a combined artificial guide-star, magnetometer, and lidar using Earth's mesospheric sodium vapor response. GSFC's new, highly innovative, patent-pending, pulsed Raman laser will be used for this system. Additionally, the PI will leverage GSFC's new laser ground station facility at the Geoscience and Geophysical Astronomical Observatory (GGAO). The first year goal is to develop and demonstrate the technlogy required for a prototype, low-cost portable system which will be fully demonatrated in a second year effort. This is both a mission concept maturation and technology maturation for risk reduction. There are numerous potential partners/applications: 1) Optical free-space communication - adaptive-optics enhancement for large telescope receiver optical-ground-stations for Exploration, 2) Enhanced-imaging for orbital debris tracking for Exploration, 3) Astronomy - artificial star for ground observations, 4) Earth/Planetary magnetometry - remote magnetometry based on atomic sodium Larmor-precession, 5)Heliophysics Earth Mesosphere Science - stand-alone & cal/val for ACaDaMe - temperature lidar on ISS, 6) US Air Force - artificial star and lidar. The Air Force has already expressed strong interest in such a transportable, widely-deployable, combined sodium lidar/guide-star. Deliverables include a field-deployable, 5 W, single-frequency Q-switched Raman laser operating at the resonant-sodium 589 nm. A second year of support will be needed to build the combined artificial star, temperature and magnetometer lidar system for initial use at GSFC's existing GGAO facility. This effort will leverage existing HTIDeS funding, an EPSCOR grant to Delaware State University, and possibly the ACaDaMe Project (to be proposed in FY19).
Communication from the ground to/from spacecraft remains a key element of virtually all NASA missions. Advances in reliability, accessability, and utility are always desired. Ground based portability, combined with multifunctionality (such as imaging for orbital debris tracking and astronomy), would be a clear benefit to many NASA and DoD missions. This CIF addresses STMD's directive to "develop .... capabilities that may enable or significantly enhance future NASA missions" and directly addresses Exploration needs for orbital debris tracking and large ground receivers for high-data-rate optical communication. The GSFC astronomy community routinely conducts ground-based science, architecture (e.g. telescope arrays) and instruments and can greatly benefit with adaptive optics enabled by an artificial guide-star. A successful demonstration of remote magnetometry can lead to partnering with the US Department of Defense and with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. A small non-magnetic CUBESat vapor cell in Earth (and/or) planetary orbit could show unprecedented magnet-field measurements. The current magnetometers have a noise floor determined by satellite magnetic fields (long booms reduce the noise somewhat).
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