POINTING DEVICE AND INTER-SATELLITE OPTICAL COMMUNICATION SYSTEM USING IT

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a pointing device that is made smaller and lighter at a low cost and to provide an inter-satellite optical communication system. SOLUTION: The system is provided with a pointing mirror driving device 1 that uses a common mirror so as to control the angle of a received beam and the angle of a transmission beam, a transmission and reception multiplexer/ demultiplexer optical system 2 that multiplexes a transmission beam and a received beam on a common optical axis, demultiplexes the received beam from the transmission beam by utilizing, e.g. wavelength difference and leads the received beam to a received light distribution optical system 3, a received light distribution optical system 3 that is a means to distribute the received beam to a prescribed optical system, an angle detector 4 that is a means to receive the received beam distributed from the received light distribution optical system 3 so as to detect the angle error, a communication sensor 5 that receives the received beam distributed from the received light distribution optical system 3 to detect communication data, and a control circuit 6 that uses a signal outputted from the angle detector 4 to drive the pointing mirror drive device 1.