HiRes camera and LIDAR ranging system for the Clementine mission

Conference · Sat Apr 01 00:00:00 EST 1995

OSTI ID:86971

Ledebuhr, A G; Kordas, J F; Lewis, I T ^[1]

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1. and others

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory developed a space-qualified High Resolution (HiRes) imaging LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) system for use on the DoD Clementine mission. The Clementine mission provided more than 1.7 million images of the moon, earth, and stars, including the first ever complete systematic surface mapping of the moon from the ultra-violet to near-infrared spectral regions. This article describes the Clementine HiRes/LIDAR system, discusses design goals and preliminary estimates of on-orbit performance, and summarizes lessons learned in building and using the sensor. The LIDAR receiver system consists of a High Resolution (HiRes) imaging channel which incorporates an intensified multi-spectral visible camera combined with a Laser ranging channel which uses an avalanche photo-diode for laser pulse detection and timing. The receiver was bore sighted to a light-weight McDonnell-Douglas diode-pumped ND:YAG laser transmitter that emmitted 1.06 {micro}m wavelength pulses of 200 mJ/pulse and 10 ns pulse-width, The LIDAR receiver uses a common F/9.5 Cassegrain telescope assembly. The optical path of the telescope is split using a color-separating beamsplitter. The imaging channel incorporates a filter wheel assembly which spectrally selects the light which is imaged onto a custom 12 mm gated image intensifier fiber-optically-coupled into a 384 x 276 pixel frame transfer CCD FPA. The image intensifier was spectrally sensitive over the 0.4 to 0.8 {micro}m wavelength region. The six-position filter wheel contained 4 narrow spectral filters, one broadband and one blocking filter. At periselene (400 km) the HiRes/LIDAR imaged a 2.8 km swath width at 20-meter resolution. The LIDAR function detected differential signal return with a 40-meter range accuracy, with a maximum range capability of 640 km, limited by the bit counter in the range return counting clock.

• Research Organization: Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE, Washington, DC (United States); Department of Defense, Washington, DC (United States)
• DOE Contract Number: W-7405-ENG-48
• OSTI ID: 86971
• Report Number(s): UCRL-JC-120870; CONF-950472-14; ON: DE95014396; TRN: AHC29521%%27
• Resource Relation: Conference: SPIE international symposium on aerospace/defense sensing and dual-use photonics, Orlando, FL (United States), 17-21 Apr 1995; Other Information: PBD: Apr 1995
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

45 MILITARY TECHNOLOGY, WEAPONRY, AND NATIONAL DEFENSE
44 INSTRUMENTATION
INCLUDING NUCLEAR AND PARTICLE DETECTORS
BALLISTIC MISSILE DEFENSE
OPTICAL RADAR
DESIGN
PERFORMANCE
MOON
REMOTE SENSING
MULTISPECTRAL PHOTOGRAPHY
SPECIFICATIONS
COMPUTERIZED CONTROL SYSTEMS
AUXILIARY SYSTEMS
NEODYMIUM LASERS
CALIBRATION
FLIGHT TESTING
IMAGES