Design, construction and testing of lateral transfer retroreflectors for space-based applications

The function of a Lateral Transfer Retroreflector is to accurately shift a beam of light laterally, while changing its direction 180 degrees. It uses three optically-flat, reflective surfaces located in mutually perpendicular planes to return an output beam parallel, but laterally separated from the input beam. The device maintains parallelism of the two beams regardless of its own orientation. From mid-2011 to late 2015, two types of LTR were designed, developed, produced and tested at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland. Information about the development process, along with performance results is given.