As a project for the Department of Defense, QUEST aims to prove that secure communication can be realized via quantum key distribution from a ground station to a satellite.
I am contributing to the payload section of the satellite. In order to achieve quantum key distribution (QKD), the satellite’s downlink beam must be aligned with the ground station. Our payload is using the Bennet-Brassard 1984 scheme for polarization based QKD. Currently I am designing an embedded controller to take in camera data from the uplink and downlink beams and drive a fast steering mirror to achieve alignment.
