Abstract: This paper provides a concept for an evolution of NASA’s optical communications near Earth relay architecture. NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD), a joint project between NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory – California Institute of Technology (JPL), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory (MIT LL). LCRD will provide a minimum of two years of high data rate optical communications service experiments in geosynchr…