Laser beaming demonstrations at the Starfire Optical Range

The ability to acquire, track, and accurately direct a laser beam to a satellite is crucial for power-beaming and laser-communications. To assess the state of the art in this area, a team consisting of Air Force Phillips Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, and COMSAT Corporation personnel performed some laser beaming demonstrations to various satellites. A ruby laser and a frequency-doubled YAG laser were used with the Phillips Lab Starfire Optical Range (SOR) beam director for this activity. The ruby laser projected 20 J in 6 ms out the telescope with a beam divergence that increased from 1.4 to 4 times the diffraction limit during that time. The doubled YAG projected 0.09 J in 10 ns at 20 Hz. The SOR team demonstrated the ability to move rapidly to a satellite, center it in the telescope, then lock onto it with the tracker, and establish illumination. Several low-earth-orbit satellites with corner-cube retro-reflectors were illuminated at ranges from 1000 to 6000 km with a beam divergence estimated to be about 20 {mu}radians. The return signal from the ruby laser was collected in a 15-cm telescope, detected by a photomultiplier tube, and recorded at 400 kHz. Rapid variations in intensity (as short at 15 {mu}s) were noted, which may be due to speckles caused by phase interference from light reflected from different retro-reflectors on the satellite. The return light from the YAG was collected by a 35-cm telescope and detected by an intensified CCD camera. The satellite brightened by about a factor of 30 in the sunlight when the laser was turned on, and dimmed back to normal when the 50-{mu}radian point-ahead was turned off. The satellite was illuminated at 1 Hz as it entered the earth`s shadow and followed for about 10 seconds in the shadow. In another demonstration, four neighboring GEO satellites were located and centered in succession with a 3.5-m telescope at a rate of about 16 seconds per satellite.