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NASA Green

A NASA program

NASA program required a laser system with dual Q-switched 500mJ 9nSec pulsed beam @ λ=532nM that also output the dual residual 1064nM energy pulses all at 30 Hz and optionally 50Hz PRF.  The system required full adjustability of optical pumping power & timing, fully adjustable Q-switch timing and full timing adjustment of the time separation (beam switching) of dual beam emissions.  Mr. Allison was the electrical/electronics lead and our small team was tasked with finishing the design and development of the embedded system that had previously been started.  The team successfully completed the design, development and delivery of the embedded control electronics subsystem that utilized 17 separate MPUs in a distributed control architecture.  Extremely high optical power densities prevented the overall system from meeting the required power and beam quality specifications.   The system was delivered to NASA but it could only be operated at an output power level about 2/3 of what was originally specified.