Space laser transmitter development for ICESat-2 mission

Combining airborne hyperspectral and LiDAR data across local sites for upscaling shrubland structural information: Lessons for HyspIRI

“…While NASA's ICESat full-waveform GLAS instrument confounds energy peaks for rangeland vegetation and ground, resulting in a ground return pulse to widen from low vegetation (Duong, Lindenbergh, Pfeifer, & Vosselman, 2009;Hug, Ullrich, & Grimm, 2004), new potential may arise in the upcoming ICESat-2 mission. The photon counting instrument of ATLAS on ICESat-2 and operating with a green wavelength may not have the capacity to resolve low-height vegetation across fine scales, yet several mission characteristics have the potential to improve regional scale estimates of structural metrics (Yua et al, 2010). Current testing in shrub ecosystems using photon counting airborne multiple altimeter beam experimental LiDAR (MABEL) data is underway.…”

Integration and alignment of ATLAS instrument engineering model components in Optical Development System Lab

“…It is being developed at GSFC in Greenbelt, MD. GSFC has a history of producing space-borne laser altimeters including the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) for the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) mission [3], the Geoscience Laser Altimeter (GLAS) for the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite (ICESat) [4], the Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA) for the Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) mission [5], and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) [6]. The ATLAS instrument differs in that it takes a micro pulse laser altimetry approach to achieve improved geolocation.…”

Laser Diode Pump Technology for Space Applications

“…[29] Thus far all space flight instruments, except for LOLA, are single beam systems. Future space-based instruments will very likely be multiple beam systems that will improve on pointing and reduce the uncertainty in altimetry measurements introduced by the crosstrack surface slope.…”

“…On a parallel effort, two LDAs per vendor were tested during extended testing in vacuum of the LOLA EM laser system. [29] The LOLA EM laser operated in vacuum for over one billion shots. Even though some system degradation was measured during this test it was attributed to other components, not the diode arrays.…”