The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Details The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter The Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter

Dec 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006agufm.u41c0826s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2006, abstract #U41C-0826

Physics

1221 Lunar And Planetary Geodesy And Gravity (5417, 5450, 5714, 5744, 6019, 6250 Moon (1221)

Scientific paper

The LOLA instrument design is similar to those of MOLA on Mars Global Surveyor and MLA on MESSENGER in cruise to Mercury, but with five laser beams and five receiver channels. The laser transmitter consists of a single stage diode-pumped and Q-switched Nd:YAG laser at 1064-nm wavelength, 2.7-mJ pulse energy, 6-ns pulse width, 28-Hz pulse rate, and 100 ?rad beam divergence angle. A diffractive optic element (DOE), made of fused silica with an etched-in diffraction pattern, is used to split the single incident laser beam into five slightly off pointed beams. The reflected signal is collected by a 14-cm diameter telescope and a 5-optical-fiber array at the focal plane, each sees one of the five laser spots on the lunar surface and delivers the signal to one of the five avalanche photodiode (APD). The transmitted laser pulse and the five received laser pulses are time stamped with respect to the spacecraft mission elapsed time (MET) using a set of time-to-digital converters (TDC) at <0.5 ns precision. LOLA also measures the transmitted and the received pulse energy by integrating the pulse waveforms. The on board science algorithm running on an embedded microprocessor autonomously adjust the receiver detection threshold levels, the detector gain, and to keep the range window tracking the lunar surface returns. The instrument weighs 12.6 kg and 33 watts of power. From the 50 km orbit of LRO the five laser beams illuminate 5 spots on the lunar surface, each 5 meters in diameter. The spots are arranged in a cross-pattern within a 50-meter circle on the lunar surface and the pattern is oriented such that the along- track motion of the spacecraft produces 5 parallel profiles of spots approximately 50 meters apart.

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