difficulties which arise from the lower limit of antenna dimensions and which lead to technical and economic problems. The application of laser radiation as a means of electric energy transmission over large distances to space and within space could prove to be competitive. The supply of power to satellites at GEO could be provided by a constant pair of ground-based laser station-satellites requiring major efforts to provide laser beams with an extremely small angular divergence and an extremely high precision of optical pointing. HEO demands to resolve some other problems: complex dispatching of groundbased laser stations and the satellite network; quicker optical pointing both for laser stations and for satellites. The power supply of LEO satellites directly by ground-based stations is sometimes possible, but some features (eg. the short time of direct vision of the satellite from the laser station; the necessity of having a close network of laser stations; the high angular velocity of the optical pointing of the satellite to the laser station and vice versa) all lead to a preferable version — the use of relay space stations. The intermediate situation takes place for interorbital, electrically propelled transmission of payloads. This case needs to have all properties which belong to different parts of the system under discussion. The power supply system consists of a ground based laser station with an optical system to form laser beams and to point the laser station to the satellite, of the on board system, which includes a means of communication with the laser station, a converter of laser radiation energy to electricity, a cooling system, buffer energy storage for energy conditioning and for short-term power supply during the possible interruptions of the main power supply (among others, during the switching of the satellite from one laser station to another). The utilization of the PCM significantly simplifies the high power laser and allows us to produce the output laser beam which has the wavefront in full accordance with atmospheric properties and the laser station optics at this moment. The simultaneous compensation of optical imperfections and self pointing of the system exactly onto the satellite take place due to the unusual properties of PCM. During the time of light propagation from the satellite to the laser station and back the satellite’s displacement is very significant. Nevertheless, the successful control of the output beam is possible by an additional scheme. We suggested such a scheme in Sow J. of Quantum Electronics (English translation) v. 8, p. 359, 1978, fora laser fusion system. We have carried out large-scale experiments to compensate for optical imperfections of the atmosphere by PCM’s with simultaneous, additional laser beam deflection according to the scheme. These experiments have been quite
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