Design and In-Orbit Performance of a 1U 1 Gbit/s Optical Communication Terminal

A CubeSat-compatible optical communication terminal (CubeCAT) has been designed, manufactured, and tested in orbit. It achieves 1 Gbit/s data rate in downlink at low biterror- rate (≤ 10⁻⁶), has a 1U volume, 1.0 kg mass and 10.8 W power consumption. It is based on a compact and efficient optical architecture, a low mass and stable mechanical structure, a high performing and robust pointing control strategy and designed to be compliant with the CCSDS O3K standard, with Reed-Solomon 223/255 coding. For launch survival a dedicated enveloping suspension module has been realized. Being launched and onboard the NorSat-TD satellite, the Cube- CAT terminal has established various successful in-orbit communication downlinks. Data from the optical ground stations TNO (The Hague, Netherlands), MeO (Grasse, France) and Izaña (Tenerife, Spain) have been analyzed and verify the CubeCAT design.