ESA's OGS upgrades for EDRS: Development status

Abstract

Over the past 20 years, the ESA Optical Ground Station (OGS) has become a worldwide reference in the field of free space optical communications. The ESA OGS has extensively supported experiments and tests between optical communication terminals in space and communication equipment on ground. At present, several equipment of the ESA OGS are being upgraded to be able to support in-orbit test campaigns of space assets of the European Data Relay System (EDRS), commercially referred to as SpaceDataHighway, which embark EDRS Laser Communication Terminals (EDRS LCTs) developed by Tesat-Spacecom. In this paper, we present a summary of the ESA OGS upgrades and test results in support of the EDRS-A LCT in orbit commissioning (including rehearsal tests with the Alphasat LCT). Additionally, we present an overview of the ESA OGS upgrades presently under development aiming at performing EDRS link acquisition and communication tests with, for example, the EDRS-C LCT. Tesat-Spacecom and Synopta carry out these OGS's upgrades, which are financially supported by the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and ESA. The schedule of the ESA OGS upgrades currently targets a completion of the on-ground acceptance test campaign and equipment delivery to ESA in 4th quarter of 2018.