TDP1 signal detection at Tenerife ground station

The Optical Communication Terminal is one of four ESA Technology Demonstration Payloads carried by Alphasat and created by German space agency DLR and German company TESAT. It relays Earth observation data from low-Earth orbit (LEO) to geostationary orbit (GEO) through laser transmission. A Ka-band transmitter then forwards the data to a ground station.

Here, its signal is detected for the first time by ESA's Tenerife ground station in the Canary Islands during an illumination test.