Operational Results from the Deep Space Optical Communications Project Ground Laser Transmitter

The Deep Space Optical Communication (DSOC) project is conducting an ongoing technology demonstration of free-space optical communications over an approximate range of 0.05 to 3.3 AU concurrently with NASA’s Psyche mission, which launched on October 13, 2023 and hosts the DSOC flight transceiver (FLT). The DSOC Ground Laser Transmitter (GLT), located at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Optical Communication Telescope Laboratory (OCTL), provides a high-power (up to 5 kW on-sky) optical uplink beacon that serves as a line-of-sight FLT downlink pointing reference and delivers low rate (1.8 kbps) uplink command data to the FLT. This paper presents an overview of the GLT subsystems, concept of operations, and results from the first phase of DSOC operations including analysis of the beacon pointing and the performance of the laser safety subsystem.