Abstract: Speaker and Presenter at the Lincoln Laboratory Communications Workshop on May 23, 2017 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, MA. This presentation discusses a concept for an evolution of NASAs optical communications near-Earth relay architecture. NASA’s Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) is a joint project between NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory California Institute of Technology (JPL), and the Massa…