Tesat-Spacecom has developed a series of fiber coupled single frequency lasers for space applications ranging from onboard metrology for space borne FTIR spectrometers to step tunable seed lasers for LIDAR applications. The cw-seed laser developed for the ESA AEOLUS Mission shows a 3* 10^-11 Allen variance from 1 sec time intervals up to 1000 sec. Q-switched lasers with stable beam pointing under space environments are another field of development. One important aspect of a space borne laser system is a reliable fiber coupled laser diode pump source around 808nm. A dedicated development concerning chip design and packaging yielded in a 5*10⁶h MTTF (mean time to failure) for the broad area emitters. Qualification and performance test results for the different laser assemblies will be presented and their application in the different space programs.

Date Published: 22 April 2006
PDF: 8 pages
Proc. SPIE 6189, Optical Sensing II, 61892I (22 April 2006); doi: 10.1117/12.678601

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 6189:
Optical Sensing II
Brian Culshaw; Anna G. Mignani; Hartmut Bartelt; Leszek R. Jaroszewicz, Editor(s)