Paper 13355-27
Paper 13355-27
The RF/ optical hybrid ground station for deep space communications
29 January 2025 • 2:00 PM - 2:20 PM PST | Moscone South, Room 208 (Level 2)
Abstract
The RF/Optical hybrid ground station (RFO) is a technology demonstration deployed at the Deep Space Network (DSN) site in Goldstone, California. As a pathfinder demonstration, RFO has demonstrated the first simultaneous, co-located radiofrequency and optical communications with a spacecraft in deep space. As the demand for larger data volumes from planetary and exploration missions continues to grow and the DSN's capacity becomes increasingly constrained, hybrid RF/ Optical ground stations emerge as a potential solution. This architecture combines the advantages of optical communications, offering high data rates, with the reliability and weather resilience of RF communications, thereby ensuring the maintenance of mission-critical communications links.
This paper provides a description of the RFO system architecture and design. The results of data downlink demonstrations from the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) payload on the Psyche spacecraft are presented, achieving optical data rates of up to 15 Mbps from a distance of 0.12 astronomical units (AU).
Presenter
Julia Milton
Jet Propulsion Lab. (United States)
Julia Milton is a systems engineer in NASA JPL's Optical and Quantum Systems Engineering group. Her work is focused on quantitative tools for modeling and uncertainty quantification in optical systems. She has worked on the coronagraph instrument for the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Quantum Gravity Gradiometer. Milton has a B.S.E. in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT where she was recipient of the Rene H. Miller Prize in systems engineering.