For studies of the European Space Agency ESA, Fraunhofer ILT develops and builds narrowband, power-stabilized fundamental mode fiber amplifiers especially for future space-based gravitational-wave detectors, e.g. LISA, and for Earth gravity field missions. In this paper, we present the status of our ongoing work, based on a highly stable fiber amplifier designed for a Next Generation Gravity field Mission (NGGM) pre-study, towards power scaling as well as enhancement of the Technology Readiness Level (TRL). Our amplifier has already demonstrated to meet the requirements for future gravity field missions. It features a design that is free of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) and a feedback loop for power stabilization.
C. Dahl, A. Baatzsch, M. Dehne, F. Gilles, P. Hager, M. Herding, K. Nicklaus, K. Voss, K. Abich, C. Braxmaier, M. Gohlke, B. Guenther, J. Sanjuan, B. Zender, G. Barranco, A. Görth, C. Mahrdt, V. Müller, D. Schütze, G. Stede, G. Heinzel
The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) is a successful Earth observation mission launched in 2002 consisting of two identical satellites in a polar low-Earth orbit [1]. The distance variations between these two satellites are measured with a Micro Wave Instrument (MWI) located in the central axis. In data postprocessing the spatial and temporal variations of the Earth’s gravitational field are recovered, which are among other things introduced by changing groundwater levels or ice-masses [2, 3, 4, 5]. The Laser Ranging Interferometer (LRI) on-board the GRACE Follow-On (GFO) mission, which will be launched in 2017 by the joint collaboration between USA (NASA) and Germany (GFZ), is a technology demonstrator to provide about two orders of magnitude higher measurement accuracy than the initial GRACE MWI, about 80 nm/√Hz in the measurement band between 2 mHz and 0.1 Hz. The integration of the LRI units on both GFO S/C has been finished in summer 2016. The design as well as the functional, performance, and thermal-vacuum tests results of the German LRI flight units will be presented.
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