NASA's Phoenix Mars lander employs a suite of instruments to investigate the properties of the planet's North polar
region. A Robotic Arm is used to retrieve subsurface samples for analysis, and a Robotic Arm Camera mounted on the
wrist of the arm provides images of the surface and of material in the scoop. The RAC and the Optical Microscope both
utilize LEDs, which enable the generation of true color imagery and provide higher illumination levels at lower power
levels than the incandescent lamps used on a predecessor instrument. Although red, green and blue LEDs were
available when the instruments were being developed, the manufacturers had not tested the devices in all the
environments the spacecraft would encounter. This paper details the results of a series of tests conducted to qualify the
lamps for the temperature, vibration, and radiation environments they would encounter during the mission.
The ALMA project (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) is a collection of 50 radio telescopes that will be installed and
operated in the high altitude desert of Atacama in northern Chile. The array is phased locked using a microwave
reference generated from highly stable phase locked laser signals transmitted over 15km single mode fiber. In this paper
we demonstrate the ability of generating and distributing high frequency photonic based microwave reference in a single
mode fiber of 14 km to 2 of the ALMA radio telescopes. 81GHz photonic LO reference is generated and transmitted
over the single mode fiber to the receivers of the 2 antennas. The paper will also present the method used to measure and
dynamically stabilize the phase of the microwave photonics reference transmitted to 2 antennas while simulating antenna
motion. The photonic phase correction system will null the unwanted phase in the microwave reference resulted from
the motion of the telescope, maintaining coherence between the 2 antennas.
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