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Lasers are the optical communications

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of the future. Laser Comm demonstration

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is going to be a two year flight. The

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hardware is made up of avionics boxes

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which transmit the data up to optical

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telescopes that are going to be located

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on a geosyncronous satellite. The

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optical telescopes can receive and

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transmit the data not only to the ground

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stations but also to other geosyncronous

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satellites, low earth orbit satellites,

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space station or in the future deep space

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communication missions to Mars. In the

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fall of 2013 NASA launched a satellite

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to the moon called LADDE. On that

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satellite had a single terminal for a

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demonstration, only supposed to be for

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six hours. To demonstrate that it could

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receive and send back a high rate data

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by high rate data. When we talk about

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high rate data we are talking about an

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order of magnitude higher than an RF

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system can do right now.  That particular

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program was very successful, it actually

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operated for 25 hours before the whole

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thing on purpose was crashed into the

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moon. So LCRD, Laser Communications

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Relay Demonstration, is a follow-up

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program that will have the high rate

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system transfer on a geosyncronous

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satellite. Scheduled for two years on

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orbit but could live as long as five

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years. The benefits of laser and or

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optical communications is the fact

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that you can transmit data much much

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faster than you can using RF device.

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It will also carry more data, in both

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cases the benefit to NASA is that we

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can get information out to deep space

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missions faster and we can also carry

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more data at the same time, whether

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it is a manned mission or a probe and

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get that information back. It’s more

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efficient, it’s higher data rate, it’s

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just much better across the board.