The Planetary Science Division (PSD) within NASA Headquarters' Science Mission Directorate (SMD) has several
Research & Analysis (R&A) programs that support the definition and development of instrumentation for science
investigations of all bodies in the solar system. These programs are part of the Research Opportunities in Space and
Earth Sciences (ROSES) - 2008 and can be found at http://nspires.nasaprs.com
com. Science instrumentation of interest to
the Planetary Science Division includes remote sensors as well as in situ sensors and laser-based instruments are well
suited for both scenarios. The programs that support hardware development include the Planetary Instrument Definition
& Development Program (PIDDP), the Astrobiology Science & Technology Instrument Development (ASTID) program,
the Astrobiology Science & Technology for exploring Planets (ASTEP) program, and the Mars Technology Project/Mars
Instrument Development Program (MIDP). PIDDP has been expanding over the last two years to cover advanced
instrument development with Technology Readiness Levels up to TRL 6. Beyond these R&A elements, a new
Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for Stand Alone Missions of Opportunity Notice (SALMON) will provide
resources to further develop science instrumentation for flights of opportunity aboard non-NASA missions.
We have developed and demonstrated both Ytterbium-doped and Erbium-doped, diode-pumped and seeded, fiber amplifiers at 1064 and 1570 nm, respectively. By pulse pumping a one-stage Erbium amplifier, we have shown greater than 20 W peak output power and high wall-plug efficiency. Our pulse-pumping approach improves energy efficiency up to 80% (at 1 kHz PRF) over the identical CW pumping scheme while suppressing amplified spontaneous emission (ASE). We report on the development of these rare-earth doped fiber amplifiers and the application of multi-stage fiber amplifiers to create a multi-spectral laser transmitter ideally suited for space and planetary lidar investigations.
A laser diode beam combiner employing diffraction gratings has been fabricated and tested. The Grating Laser Beam Combiner (GLBC) uses two holographic diffraction gratings to incoherently combine the first order diffraction components of four 35 mW AlGaAs lasers. The grating rhomb design minimizes the transmitter sensitivity to the inherent frequency instability of laser diodes. The overall throughput of the combiner is 74 percent. Each laser was temperature controlled to 0.1 C and modulated with 110 Mbps QPPM data. Two lasers under modulation were coaligned to within 76 microrad with a combined average power of 45 mW.
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