End-to-End Control System Verification of the STARLAB Experiment,

Abstract : This paper describes an electro-optical tracking and beam control system simulation used to analyze the performance for the space shuttle based STARLAB experiment hardware. STARLAB is to provide an on orbit demonstration of acquisition, tracking and pointing (ATP) techniques critical to strategic defense directed energy concepts. In particular, a target booster will be optically tracked from launch to re-entry. This rocket will be instrumented to "score'1 how accurately a laser beam can be pointed by the experiment. This paper focuses on techniques used to predict on-orbit performance based on laboratory testing and simulations.