Abstract

NASA is designing a tropospheric water vapor differential absorption lidar (DIAL) instrument for the ER-2 aircraft. The program, called LASE for Lidar Atmospheric Sensing Experiment, is an outgrowth of current airborne lidar activities^1,2. Overall program management resides in NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications. Langley Research Center is providing project management, experiment definition, system Integration, and wavemeter development. Goddard Space Flight Center will develop the tunable Alexandrite lasers. The LASE in-flight tuning scheme must meet experiment requirements, accommodate an Initial laser wavelength uncertainty, and be automatic. This paper, after providing an overview of the experiment requirements and LASE system, describes a tuning scheme which potentially reduces the wavemeter from a multiple interferameter unit to a single interferometer unit.

© 1985 Optical Society of America