Potential NASA Commercial Applications: The broadband fiber Raman amplifier (FRA) proposed is applicable to future NASA missions where tunable high power cw lasers are needed at infrared wavelengths not currently available by other commercially available sources, in support of applications such as LIDAR, spectroscopy, and communications. Specifically, high power tunable laser sources are relevant to trace gas and atmospheric constituent measurements in future planetary exploration (e.g. Mars, New Frontiers missions to Saturn and Uranus) and earth-science (e.g. ASCENDS) missions as outlined in the NRC Decadal Survey Reports "Visions and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013-2022" and "Earth Science and Applications from Space: National Imperatives for the Next Decade and Beyond" respectively. Such lasers can provide more power for increased measurement sensitivity and can easily be integrated into absorption LIDAR and tunable laser spectrometer instruments (e.g. Mars Curiosity rover) currently using bulkier free-space solid-state lasers. Not only are all-fiber lasers more robust, but they can reduce the overall instrument footprint in the ever-precious real estate of space science payloads, making room for additional instrumentation and adding value to the overall science mission. Broadband FRAs could also be useful in the relay of data at optical wavelengths which provide greater bandwidth than existing RF channels as deemed important in the NRC Planetary Science Decadal Report.
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