A method of fine pointing of laser beams using laser arrays has been developed. The telescope system combines a lens system and a vertical cavity surface emitting laser/photodetector array. It does not use moving parts. In computer simulations, it is applied to CubeSats satellites that use body pointing. Body pointing was used by the Aerospace Corporation for CubeSats in LEO at 450 km in NASA’s Optical Communications and Sensors Demonstration (OCSD) program. Computer simulations of this fine pointing capability have been applied previously to CubeSats in the OCSD program. Computer simulations of this laser pointing are applied to CubeSats in LLO at 100 km. With more accurate pointing, a laser beam with smaller divergence can be used. For the case of the AeroCube-7B vehicle that was used in the OCSD program, computer simulations show, for example, that the divergence of the output beam can be reduced from ∼0.06 deg to 0.014 deg. For the proposed electro-optical system, reaction times to pointing changes and vibrations are on a nanosecond time scale, much faster than those for fine pointing systems that use moving parts, such as fast steering mirrors or that use quad-cell photodetectors to improve the body pointing of the CubeSat.

中文翻译：

---

使用用于立方体卫星的激光阵列对激光束进行精细指向

已经开发了一种使用激光阵列精确指向激光束的方法。望远镜系统结合了透镜系统和垂直腔面发射激光器/光电探测器阵列。它不使用移动部件。在计算机模拟中，它被应用于使用身体指向的 CubeSats 卫星。在美国宇航局的光通信和传感器演示 (OCSD) 计划中，航空航天公司在 450 公里处的 LEO 中为 CubeSats 使用了身体指向。这种精细指向能力的计算机模拟先前已应用于 OCSD 程序中的 CubeSats。这种激光指向的计算机模拟应用于 LLO 中 100 公里处的立方体卫星。通过更精确的指向，可以使用发散度更小的激光束。例如，对于 OCSD 计划中使用的 AeroCube-7B 飞行器，计算机模拟显示，输出光束的发散度可以从 ~0.06 度减少到 0.014 度。对于所提出的电光系统，对指向变化和振动的反应时间在纳秒级，比使用移动部件（如快速转向镜或使用四单元光电探测器以提高精度）的精细指向系统快得多。 CubeSat 的身体指向。