Compact Lidar for Continuous Monitoring of Atmospheric Extinction

摘要

Physical Sciences Inc. is developing an advanced, compact lidar capable of continuous mapping of atmospheric extinction to provide environmental situational awareness for high energy laser weapon operations by the Navy. The lidar uses a MicroPulse Lidar architecture and combines a solid state Nd:YLF laser operating at l micron with photon counting detectors and advanced aerosol retrieval algorithms. We report on the design of the engineering prototype and provide a summary of the system performance demonstrated during the Comprehensive Atmospheric Boundary Layer Extinction / Turbulence Refinement experiment conducted at the Shuttle Landing Facility at Kennedy Space Center in June, 2017.