AE 585 Seminar Series - Laser Communication with CubeSats
Kerri Cahoy, Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT
Thursday, September 13, 2018
4:00 PM
1009 - Boeing Lecture Hall
Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building
Map
Laser Communication with CubeSats
Kerri Cahoy
Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT
CubeSats can be as large as a toaster oven, only with 100 times less available power. CubeSats typically use radio frequency (RF) communication, where higher data rates usually belong to commercial CubeSats. Due to size, weight, and power (SWaP) limits and regulatory constraints, most CubeSats transmit at <2 Watts with relatively low gain antennas. With the rapid growth in CubeSats on orbit, RF licensing is a challenge. Laser communications (lasercom) systems have access to currently unregulated bandwidth. We demonstrate how improvement in fine pointing capability allows CubeSats in Low Earth Orbit to track a ground station or crosslink to another CubeSat, enabling lasercom up to Gbps, with enough power efficiency to allow use of instrument payloads. Low-cost, compact lasercom terminals can support large constellations or swarms of CubeSat sensors collecting terabytes or petabytes of remote sensing data daily. Lasercom downlinks and crosslinks within constellations and swarms can also enable exchanges of large volumes of data for autonomous onboard processing toward intelligent system planning and scheduling. We discuss MIT's Nanosatellite Optical Downlink Experiment and its corresponding Portable Telescope for Lasercom (PorTeL), MIT's CubeSat Lasercom Infrared CrosslinK mission (CLICK), and MIT's Scheduling, Planning and Routing Intersatellite Networking Tool (SPRINT).
About the Speaker:
Kerri L. Cahoy, Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, received her B.S. (2000) in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and her M.S. (2002) and Ph.D. (2008) degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University working with the Radio Science Team on Mars Global Surveyor. From 2006 to 2008, she was a Senior Payload and Communication Sciences Engineer at Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, CA. From 2008 to 2010, Dr. Cahoy was a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow in Exoplanet Exploration at NASA Ames Research Center. From 2010 to 2011, she was a Radio Science research scientist on the MIT Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar mission team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Prof. Cahoy currently holds the Rockwell International Career Development Chair. Dr. Cahoy leads the MIT Space, Telecommunications, Astronomy, and Radiation (STAR) Lab, part of the Space Systems Laboratory
Kerri Cahoy
Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, MIT
CubeSats can be as large as a toaster oven, only with 100 times less available power. CubeSats typically use radio frequency (RF) communication, where higher data rates usually belong to commercial CubeSats. Due to size, weight, and power (SWaP) limits and regulatory constraints, most CubeSats transmit at <2 Watts with relatively low gain antennas. With the rapid growth in CubeSats on orbit, RF licensing is a challenge. Laser communications (lasercom) systems have access to currently unregulated bandwidth. We demonstrate how improvement in fine pointing capability allows CubeSats in Low Earth Orbit to track a ground station or crosslink to another CubeSat, enabling lasercom up to Gbps, with enough power efficiency to allow use of instrument payloads. Low-cost, compact lasercom terminals can support large constellations or swarms of CubeSat sensors collecting terabytes or petabytes of remote sensing data daily. Lasercom downlinks and crosslinks within constellations and swarms can also enable exchanges of large volumes of data for autonomous onboard processing toward intelligent system planning and scheduling. We discuss MIT's Nanosatellite Optical Downlink Experiment and its corresponding Portable Telescope for Lasercom (PorTeL), MIT's CubeSat Lasercom Infrared CrosslinK mission (CLICK), and MIT's Scheduling, Planning and Routing Intersatellite Networking Tool (SPRINT).
About the Speaker:
Kerri L. Cahoy, Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT, received her B.S. (2000) in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, and her M.S. (2002) and Ph.D. (2008) degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University working with the Radio Science Team on Mars Global Surveyor. From 2006 to 2008, she was a Senior Payload and Communication Sciences Engineer at Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, CA. From 2008 to 2010, Dr. Cahoy was a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow in Exoplanet Exploration at NASA Ames Research Center. From 2010 to 2011, she was a Radio Science research scientist on the MIT Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL) lunar mission team at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Prof. Cahoy currently holds the Rockwell International Career Development Chair. Dr. Cahoy leads the MIT Space, Telecommunications, Astronomy, and Radiation (STAR) Lab, part of the Space Systems Laboratory
| Building: | Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Building |
|---|---|
| Event Type: | Lecture / Discussion |
| Tags: | Engineering |
| Source: | Happening @ Michigan from Aerospace Engineering |
