The registered history of laser technologies for space application starts with the first laser echoes reflected off the Moon in 1962. Since then, photonic technologies have become very prominent in most technical development. Their presence has also dramatically increased in space applications thanks to the many advantages they present over traditional equivalent devices, such as the immunity against electromagnetic interference, as well as their efficiency and low power consumption. Lasers are one of the key components in most of those applications. In this review, we present an overview of the main technologies involving lasers that are currently deployed in space, before reviewing the requirements for lasers to be reliable in that environment before discussing the advantages and drawbacks of replacing standard technologies by newly developed photonic laser-based devices.
1960 is the birth year of both the laser and the Mars exploration missions. Eleven years passed before the first successful landing on Mars, and another six before the first rover could explore the planet’s surface. In 2011, both technologies were reunited with the first laser landing on Mars as part of the ChemCam instrument, integrated inside the Curiosity Rover. In 2020, two more rovers with integrated lasers are expected to land on Mars: one through the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Mars 2020 mission and another through the European Space Agency (ESA) ExoMars mission. The ExoMars mission laser is one of the components of the Raman Spectrometer instrument, which the Aerospace Technology National Institute of Spain (INTA) is responsible for. It uses as its excitation source a laser designed by Monocrom and manufactured in collaboration with the Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Optics and Precision Engineering (IOF). In this paper, we present for the first time the final flight module laser that has been installed in the rover’s onboard laboratory and validated to be shipped to Mars in 2020. Particular emphasis is given to mechanical considerations and assembly procedures, as the ExoMars laser assembly has required soldering techniques in contrast to the standard adhesive technologies used for most laser assembly processes in order to fulfill the environmental and optical requirements of the mission.
Cooperative, connected and automated mobility (CCAM) services along different countries require cross-border solutions to support seamless delivery of services in a multioperator, multi-telco-vendor, and multi-car-manufacturer scenario. The H2020 5GCroCo project will trial 5G technologies in the European cross-border corridor along France, Germany and Luxembourg, as well as in five small-scale trial sites. 5GCroCo analyses three cross-border use cases: tele-operated driving, highdefinition map generation and distribution for autonomous vehicles, and anticipated cooperative collision avoidance (ACCA). This paper presents the infrastructure, control architecture, backend software, and end-to-end service orchestration of the cross-border ACCA use case deployed in the Barcelona small-scale trial site.
A waveguide laser with a neodymium-doped silica core is fabricated on a silicon substrate by a combination of flame hydrolysis deposition, solution doping, and direct UV writing. The neodymium-ion concentration is estimated to be approximately 8000 parts in 10(5). The propagation loss around 1.05 microns is < 0.8 dB/cm. Lasing in the range 1048-1056 nm and 1356 +/- 1 nm is observed. A slope efficiency of 33% for a high-reflectivity output coupler and a threshold of 4 mW of absorbed power for a 25% output coupler are measured for the 4F3/2-->4I11/2 transition.
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