Ground Station for Terabyte Infrared Delivery (TBIRD)

The Terabyte Infrared Delivery (TBIRD) technology demonstration commenced operations in June 2022 following the launch in late May 2022. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Optical Communications Telescope Laboratory (OCTL), 1-meter diameter telescope was instrumented to serve as the ground station for TBIRD. The instrumentation was a combination of lasers and modem electronics supplied by the Lincoln Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (LL-MIT) along with optics, sensors, and an existing adaptive optics (AO) system. The AO was embedded in an existing Optical Ground Station (OGS-1) setup supporting NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD). The transmitting and receiving optics for TBIRD were “threaded” around the OGS-1 optics without breaking configuration and allowing easy switching between LCRD and TBIRD operations with a few motorized actuators. In this paper we describe (i) the design and deployment of the ground station; (ii) the concept of operations and (iii) demonstration results. Keywords: Optical Communications, Optical Ground Station, LEO satellite, CubeSat