Laser beacon adaptive optics for power beaming applications

This paper discusses the laser beam control system requirements for power beaming applications. Power beaming applications include electric and thermal engine propulsion for orbit transfer, station changing, and recharging batteries. Beam control includes satellite acquisition, high accuracy tracking, higher order atmospheric compensation using adaptive optics, and precision point-ahead. Beam control may also include local laser beam clean-up with a low order adaptive optics system. This paper also presents results of tracking and higher-order correction experiments on astronomical objects. The results were obtained with a laser beacon adaptive optics system at Phillips Laboratory's Starfire Optical Range near Albuquerque, NM. At a wavelength of 0.85 micrometers , we have achieved Strehl ratios of approximately 0.50 using laser beacons and approximately 0.65 using natural stars for exposures longer than one minute on objects of approximately 8 th magnitude. The resulting point spread function has a full width half maximum (FWHM) of 0.13 arcsec.