Space

The sodium guide star technology generates artificial guide stars at nearly any point in the sky down to elevation angles of less than 30°. Fast slewing of guide stars is possible to follow the direction of view of the astronomical telescope. Applications with the highest wavefront measurement accuracy requirements use more than one guide star laser per telescope. Compliance with the highest requirements on equipment weight, footprint, thermal stability, and environmental conditions allows deployment in any kind of high-end astronomical telescopes. Simple installation, operational and maintenance procedures keep operational efforts, outage time, and costs low.

Mega-constellations of several thousand interlinked satellites that span the globe will deliver broadband internet connectivity to every location on Earth. Free-space optical communications provide ultra-high-speed, license-free, and secure interconnection links. SodiumStar-assisted adaptive optics enables the multi-terabit optical laser up- and downlinks between ground stations and satellites. It secures realizable low communication link power budgets, low terminal energy consumption, and highly precise satellite tracking by optical ground stations as the only available technology to compensate for any atmospheric link disturbances.

Highest-resolution imaging capabilities for observation of near-earth space objects (up to geostationary orbits, with altitudes of 36.000 km) are of enormous relevance not only for managing and controlling space debris but also for space missions in general (e.g. launch and early orbit phases). SodiumStar-assisted adaptive optics enables optical telescopes of the medium-size class to track and image any sun-lit object of centimeter size ranges up to the highest geostationary orbits by compensation of any kind of atmospheric imaging aberrations. By enabling twilight and daylight operational capabilities, the SodiumStar expands the possible observation time many times over.

Collision avoidance and the control of space debris have become an important part of near-Earth astronautics. The massive number of small and tiny debris particles in orbit is a real hazard for satellites and human-crewed space missions.  Laser beam-based particle maneuvering represents one promising technology to control and remove debris particles. SodiumStar-assisted adaptive optics enables laser launch telescopes to focus the maneuvering laser very precisely onto the debris target, even at high orbital angular speeds. Using a guide star laser keeps the necessary laser output power at feasible levels by compensating the optical aberrations of Earth’s atmosphere and providing a diffraction-limited beam focus on the target. Daylight operational capabilities enable longer time windows for maneuvering actions.

Deep space optical ultra-high-speed communications bridge vast distances between transmitter and receiver in interplanetary or interstellar space and require highly precise spacecraft tracking by Earth-based optical ground stations. SodiumStar-assisted adaptive optics enables uplink spacecraft tracking even at very high spacecraft speeds in deep space and compensates for any atmosphere-induced downlink signal disturbances.

Ultra-high-resolution spectroscopy of sodium atoms of Earth’s mesosphere can help investigate changes in Earth’s magnetic field, air mass movements in the upper atmosphere, and solar winds. Investigations of air mass movements enable new insights into mechanisms of climatic changes. The SodiumStar excites the sodium atoms with a single frequency laser linewidth of less than 5 MHz The laser is tunable over the entire range of sodium atoms’ velocity classes. Intensity-modulated, the laser can be used to excite Larmor oscillations, essentially making the sodium atoms a sensor for the magnetic field strength.