Defense Intelligence Reference Document Laser Lightcraft Nanosatellites

Defense Intelligence Agency · 77 pages · text from the file's own layer

This Defense Intelligence Reference Document from the Defense Intelligence Agency, dated 1 November 2010, was produced under the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications (AAWSA) Program. It describes nanosatellite technologies and proposes launching nanosats into orbit with laser Lightcraft propulsion. It also covers a weapon mission selection study and multi-megawatt laser options. The author recommends that the Department of Defense and NASA bring Lightcraft R&D back to the United States and restart the X-50LR flight demonstration program.

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“BEAMS”49 pages

p. 3 …Free-Electron Laser Electron Beam Phase-Space Evolution ....................... 59 Figure 31. Recirculating-Beam FEL System ........................................................... 60…
p. 4 …HEL Beam Pointer/Tracker ................................................................... 65 Figure 35. Basic Shared Aperture Beam Control System ......................................... 66 Figure 36…
p. 7 …This can only be achieved via laser propulsion in which the laser beam energy that is…
p. 15 …By launching spacecraft on a beam of electromagnetic radiation, researchers will have developed the first new…
p. 16 …The laser beam's pulse interacts with the mirror, spreading out and focusing into an annular…
p. 17 …1) power supply; 2) high-power (megawatt-class) laser beam generator/transmitter using novel beam optics…
p. 20 …is to the right and the laser beam strikes the stretched-out parabolic mirror/propulsion section…
p. 21 …It requires a beam power of 0.1 to 1 MW per kg of vehicle mass…
p. 22 …The ground-based megawatt-class laser beam generator is state-of-the-art technology. The cost…
p. 25 …Figure 8 illustrates the adverse beam propagation geometry associated with ETO laser propulsion by means of…
p. 26 …Attenuation Effects on Captured Laser Beam Power 261. 0.4 0.J 0.2 0.1…
p. 27 …Unfortunately the demonstrated laser beam power levels for the attractive 1.62 μm wavelength, which suffered…
p. 28 …Beam combining of several 1 MW (or higher) FELs can achieve a total combined beam output…
p. 31 …Appropriate rotation of a high-energy laser beam, emanating from a ground/sea-based laser, guides…
p. 32 …Appropriate rotation and translation of a high-energy laser beam, emanating from a moving aircraft, guides…
p. 33 …But multiple target interception within allowable time is limited by relatively long beam- riding time needed…
p. 37 …In this case, it is envisioned that the high- pulsed power within high-energy laser beams…
p. 39 …In this case, airborne laser beams at 12 km altitude will not suffer the significant propagation…
p. 41 …sidelobes, creates multiple beams, and steers the ensemble of the individual beams anywhere on Earth. The…
p. 42 …Each picosat is gravity- gradient stable, has a dipole array facing Earth, and a broader beam…
p. 43 …Commands for beam sweep delays are superimposed on the time delays of each nanosat. Each nanosat…
p. 44 …piezoelectric membrane kept flat by an electron beam in response to an optical figure sensor. MEMS…
p. 46 …technical issues include large wavelength and atmospheric absorption of the laser beam. • Carbon Monoxide (CO) Laser…
p. 47 …125 Hz@ 20μs. • Laser power, P = 2.5 MW/beam x 4 beams = 10 MW. • Laser…
p. 50 …Each power oscillator optics module transmitting a 2.5 MW beam of 10.6 μm wavelength…
p. 52 …Adding an eight amplifier chain that the system was designed for will increase the beam power…
p. 53 …However, BSSSL beam power can be scaled up further by improving presently known gain media and…
p. 54 …scalable to 1 MW beam power within 2 years. Typical solid-state lasers have the following…
p. 55 …A new technology that enables the scaling-up of BSSSL beam power is a recently developed…
p. 56 …at the same time increasing the average beam power. Figure 21. Phase Change Materials Allow Storage…
p. 57 …This exponential growth in beam output power is the result of many factors, including the parallel…
p. 58 …Microlens -O _ ,:1 Incoherent Beam Combining 'Ind1vidually Incoherent Gaussian Beams i=L Controlled /_/Steering • ... o~bined…
p. 59 …Neodymium Thulium (Tm 3+), Holmium - Range of beam wavelengths(),) produced: 0.48 μm to 2.9…
p. 61 …Multlmode Fiber Lasers 50kW Multimode Output beam quality BPP-1 o M"2-33 DC EDE…
p. 62 …The resulting laser beam photon energy depends on the electron energy, the undulator period, and (weakly…
p. 63 UNCLASSIFIED/ /F8~ 8FFl&I.«1k WliEii a,.klf electron beam ( \ I,:--- ■■>ti■-- undulator ) resonator mirror 0…
p. 64 …The superconducting accelerator gives good efficiency and gradient while recirculation of the electron beam recovers beam…
p. 65 UNCLASSIFIED/ /F&~ 8FFHiil.«1k 1!181! &••kY - K"' 1.5.t • Electron Beam: - Photocathode injector creates…
p. 66 …HIGH ENERGY LASER BEAM CONTROL ··costs could be reduced to as low as $20 per kg…
p. 67 …The typical HEL beam control system includes:++ 1) a gimbaled beam director, 2) tracking and pointing…
p. 68 UNCLASSIFIED//F&II. &FFiii,111!! l!llili &HI!¥ A novel new HEL beam control architecture being…
p. 69 …HEL Beam Pointer/Tracker (courtesy of the Directed Energy Professional Society). In summary, this new architecture…
p. 70 …The BILL is a solid-state, kilowatt-class laser that measures atmospheric conditions, allowing the beam…
p. 71 …All of these HEL beam control innovations can be quickly adapted to laser propulsion applications with…
p. 72 …The entire Lightcraft launch system is comprised of a ground, sea, or airborne laser beam generator…
p. 73 …New beam control devices and high-power optical train combinations have a resulting beam line that…
p. 75 …N. (1983), "Advanced Beamed-Energy and Field Propulsion Concepts," BDM/W-83-225-TR, BDM Corp…
p. 76 …N. (2001), "World Record Flights of Beam-Riding Rocket Lightcraft: Demonstration of 'Disruptive' Propulsion Technology," AIAA…
p. 77 …of the 6 th Int'! Symposium on Beamed Energy Propulsion, edited by C. R. Phipps, AIP…

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associated with a particular nanosat. Constellations that fly in close formation can
benefit by the use of inter-nanosat communications to reduce ground station
contention. The data would flow from a single nanosat to the ground instead of coming
from every nanosat. Communications protocols for inter-nanosat communications must
be developed.
AUTONOMY
Support costs are high if single-satellite mission operations and data analysis practices
are scaled to a constellation mission. Autonomy onboard the spacecraft and on the
ground is therefore required to ensure that mission objectives are efficiently and
inexpensively met.
Nanosat autonomy will make use of on board and ground-based remote agents with the
overarching goal of maximizing the scientific or intelligence return from each nanosat
during the mission lifetime. The remote agents achieve this goal by monitoring and
appropriately controlling nanosat subsystems. Additionally, the onboard agent
monitors the full complement of spacecraft sensors and instruments to heuristically
separate scientific or intelligence events of interest from background events, thereby
intelligently fitting the science/intelligence data within allocated spacecraft storage
resources.
Nanosats with distant orbits are out of communications range of a ground station for
nearly a week. Nanosat subsystems could be compromised if faults occurring during
this blackout period were not readily addressed. An unacceptable loss of scientific or
intelligence data could also occur. Therefore, the onboard agent will incorporate the
capability to detect, diagnose, and recover from faults.
Certain failure scenarios may not be correctable by the onboard agent. These faults will
be deferred to the ground agent for handling. Each nanosat will include data in its
telemetry on the health and status of each subsystem and a history of commands
autonomously issued since the last ground contact. The ground system will then
attempt to diagnose problems based on this data. Additionally, collective knowledge of
actions taken by all nanosats in the constellation will reside within the ground system
by virtue of the data dumps made during each contact. From this data the agent can
detect trends and systematic conditions not otherwise observable onboard the nanosat.
These highly autonomous systems will present a unique set of challenges not only to
the system designers, but also to those involved in spacecraft testing. Careful
consideration must be given to the design of the test program to ensure that the state-
space of the remote agents is validated and verified. It is equally important to
implement this program in a cost-effective manner. However, we could likely justify
deploying considerable resources to address this issue since the methods developed to
solve these challenges can be applied to numerous missions.
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Report, from the dia collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. 77 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.