Assessment of access availability of space-ground optical links.
Co-funded by European Space Agency (ESA)
Partner: DLR Airbus-DS, LOA (Laboratoire d'optique atmosphérique, Université Lille)
Duration: July 2017 - July 2018
The first objective of this study is ro access the optical availability, due to cloud blockage and atmospheric turbulance, between a spacecraft in a variety of near-Earth orbits and ground locations distributed worldwide. The second objective is to consolidate the system architecture by dimensioning of the space-based optical terminals and of the OGS (optical ground station) network, and to establish the achievable perfomance, e.g., link availability vs number of OGS, communications link duration vs number of OGS, downloaded data volume vs number of OGS, for each of the investigated space-to-ground optical link scenarios.