As the amount of information to be transmitted from deep-space rapidlyincreases, the radiofrequency technology has become a bottleneck in spacecommunications. RF is already limiting the scientific outcome of deep-spacemissions and could be a significant obstacle in the developing of mannedmissions. Lasercom holds the promise to solve this problem, as it willconsiderably increase the data rate while decreasing the energy, mass andvolume of onboard communication systems. In RF deep-space communications, wherethe received power is the main limitation, the traditional approach to boostthe data throughput has been increasing the receiver's aperture, e.g. the 70-mantennas in the NASA's Deep Space Network. Optical communications also canbenefit from this strategy, thus 10-m class telescopes have typically beensuggested to support future deep-space links. However, the cost of bigtelescopes increase exponentially with their aperture, and new ideas are neededto optimize this ratio. Here, the use of ground-based gamma-ray telescopes,known as Cherenkov telescopes, is suggested. These are optical telescopesdesigned to maximize the receiver's aperture at a minimum cost with somerelaxed requirements. As they are used in an array configuration and multipleidentical units need to be built, each element of the telescope is designed tominimize its cost. Furthermore, the native array configuration would facilitatethe joint operation of Cherenkov and lasercom telescopes. These telescopesoffer very big apertures, ranging from several meters to almost 30 meters,which could greatly improve the performance of optical ground stations. The keyelements of these telescopes have been studied applied to lasercom, reachingthe conclusion that it could be an interesting strategy to include them in thefuture development of an optical deep-space network.
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