Laser Ranging Experiment on Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter: Clocks and Ranges

Accurate ranges from Earth to the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft Laser Ranging (LR) system supplement the precision orbit determination (POD) of LRO. LRO is tracked by ten LR stations from the International Laser Ranging Service (ILRS), using H-maser, GPS steered Rb, and Cs standard oscillators as reference clocks. The LR system routinely makes one-way range measurements via laser time-of-flight from Earth to LRO. Uplink photons are received by a telescope mounted on the high-gain antenna on LRO , transferred through a fiber optic cable to the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA), and timed-tagged by the spacecraft clock. The range from the LR Earth station to LRO is derived from paired outgoing and received times. Accurate ranges can only be obtained after solving for both the spacecraft and ground station clock errors. The drift rate and aging rate of the LRO clock are calculated from data provided by the primary LR station, NASA's Next Generation Satellite Laser Ranging System (NGSLR) in Greenbelt, Maryland. The results confirm the LRO clock oscillator mid to long term stability measured during ground testing. These rates also agree well with those determined through POD. Simultaneous and near-simultaneous ranging to LRO from multiple LR stations in America, Europe, and Australia has been successfully achieved within a 10 hour window. Data analysis of these ranging experiments allows for precision modeling of the clock behaviors of each LR ground station and characterization of the station ground fire times.