Compact 1550 nm Pulsed Fiber Lasers Improve Autonomous Space Navigation

CubeSat and small-sat programs increasingly rely on pulsed LIDAR for proximity awareness and debris avoidance, but most commercial lasers are too large or thermally unstable for tight spaceborne SWaP constraints. By defining their pulse-energy, packaging, and vacuum constraints in collaboration with RPMC’s team, they identified a 1550 nm nanosecond pulsed fiber laser that offered stable, eye-safe output in a compact hermetic design suited for LEO thermal cycling.