Description: PTD-3 is the third mission in the Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator mission series. PTD-3 uses a six-unit (6U) CubeSat built by Terran Orbital, to host the TeraByte InfraRed Delivery (TBIRD) system built by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory. TBIRD is a payload that demonstrated optical communication technology to enable the transmittal of data from low Earth-orbiting satellites to ground stations at the revolutionary rate of 200 gigabits per second. This fast, error-free transfer of extremely high volumes of data may transform the operations and missions of scientific, commercial, and defense satellites. TBIRD entered into the Guinness World Records for the fastest data connection between a satellite in orbit and a receiving station on the ground. TBIRD demonstrated 200 Gbps over approx. 5 minutes from low Earth orbit (to Table Mountain, CA) for a total of 4.8 terabytes of error-free data in a single telemetry pass on April 28, 2023. The PTD-3 mission’s precision pointing capability was another major mission accomplishment. The TBIRD payload relied on that precision to “body-point” at its ground station and to maintain pointing stability while moving as fast as 17,000 mph through space. This precision pointing was crucial to achieving the narrow beam connection required for TBIRD's laser communications downlink. The spacecraft set a record for the highest accuracy pointing ever achieved by a NASA CubeSat without any moving mechanisms or propulsion systems.

Benefits: PTD-3 demonstrates a new approach for large volume data delivery from a CubeSat-scale spacecraft in low-Earth orbit. The LISA-T payload can deliver 5-10 terabytes per day to a single ground station, has a large data buffer, offers a high-rate readout capability, and a 200 Gbps optical transceiver. The mission also utilizes a low-cost widely deployable optical ground station. Very high-speed data communication, as demonstrated by PTD-3/TBIRD, enables spacecraft to downlink unprecedented quantities of data. This technology is ideal for science and exploration missions that need large data transmissions, as well as for very high-speed data connections in communication satellites. In past missions, scientists have had to selectively reduce the data retrieved from a spacecraft, limiting the overall scientific yield. Higher data rates enable greater science return from missions and enable survey type missions that were not previously feasible due to limited bandwidth.