Oxford’s Archangel Lightworks makes optical ground station breakthrough

Oxford aerospace firm Archangel Lightworks has successfully demonstrated its capability for rapid deployment of an optical ground station (OGS) without onsite calibration.

Optical ground stations facilitate real-time space-to-ground communications with satellites – useful for applications like observing space debris.

This requires accurate pointing, acquisition and tracking of satellites.

To establish line of sight tracking, optical ground terminals generally need to point extremely accurately at the expected satellite position based on a pre-shared trajectory.

Typically, a complex series of calibrations is required to determine the orientation of the optical instrument relative to planet Earth and the stars.

This requires a clear night sky, placing a weather-dependent constraint on deploying and commissioning optical ground stations.

Archangel Lightworks has now overcome this barrier.

The firm calibrated its TERRA-M OGS on 9 May before storing it in a different location. Once brought out of storage 11 days later, the OGS was able to be deployed within 30 minutes.

This type of accelerated commissioning is a critical enabling capability for the rapid, reliable deployment of satellite optical communication nodes.

It allows for deployment and operation of optical ground stations in clear-sky daytime conditions, without needing to wait for a clear night for calibration.

This feature is particularly important for high or low latitude deployments where there may be months of the year when the sun does not fully set.

Owain Pryce-Jones, chief technology officer at Archangel Lightworks, said: “This is a clear validation of the world-leading capabilities being developed by the Archangel Lightworks team and an indication of the step-change in ease of deployment and commissioning that we will be able to offer with our TERRA-M product.”