Software for Optical (Laser) Ground Station Monitor and Control
Previous NASA laser communication missions have been supported by ground terminals specific to the mission. The Low-Cost Optical Terminal project (LCOT) aims to serve as a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS), reusable, and modular optical ground terminal prototype, provide a blueprint for future optical ground terminals, and enable optical communication experiments with a variety of spacecraft from Low Earth Orbit to lunar orbit. The goal of the internship was the development of LCOT’s Gimbal Monitor and Control (GMC) application, within the LCOT Monitor and Control Subsystem (MCS). Mount control software PWI4 was provided by mount and gimbal vendor Planewave Instruments; developed in Python, GMC integrates and interfaces with PWI4 using third party libraries such as Protobuf and RabbitMQ. As a stand in for the Monitor and Control Subsystem (MCS), a test Graphical User Interface (GUI) was created to send commands to and receive telemetry from the GMC application; these commands and telemetry are sent through the RabbitMQ message bus as Protobuf encoded messages. GMC then interfaces with PWI4 which passes along desired commands and telemetry to and from a vendor provided mount and gimbal simulator. The GMC software developed allows LCOT’s Monitor and Control Subsystem (MCS) to take advantage of the existing mount control software, advancing LCOT’s efforts in the development of the MCS. The MCS and GMC software developed will contribute to LCOT’s goal as a flexible and modular optical ground terminal prototype and blueprint, which supports development towards a potential optical ground terminal network.