Space-qualified laser system for the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter

We provide a brief description of the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA) experiment for the joint ESA-JAXA mission to Mercury, BepiColombo. The text describes the main elements of the instrument and discusses several of the problems encountered during the instrument development. The actions taken to mitigate the issues are also described and the resulting performance of the instrument as determined by combining ground test data with models of Mercury and the spacecraft orbit is presented. The instrument has met the requirements set in 2005 and should provide a solid data set for the global study of the topography and internal structure of Mercury

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“…The laser for BELA has been fully described by Kallenbach et al [7]. It comprises two main elements.…”

Section: 6mentioning

confidence: 99%

The BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA): a post-launch summary

2019

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“…Achieving good coating performance under vacuum is also challenging, with strong laser degradation for porous coatings under vacuum exposure . To avoid vacuum‐related degradation, laser heads tend to be mounted in hermetically sealed boxes filled with synthetic air at atmospheric pressure . To avoid temperature gradients, heat‐dissipating elements such as laser diodes and electronics are mounted on a thermally conductive metal alloy structure .…”

Section: Technical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To avoid vacuum‐related degradation, laser heads tend to be mounted in hermetically sealed boxes filled with synthetic air at atmospheric pressure . To avoid temperature gradients, heat‐dissipating elements such as laser diodes and electronics are mounted on a thermally conductive metal alloy structure . Finally, the next generation of space lasers might come from the fibre optics field, offering high efficiency, compactness, alignment insensitivity and gain bandwidth amongst other things .…”

Section: Technical Considerationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spaceborne laser filamentation for atmospheric remote sensing

Dicaire

Jukna

Praz

et al. 2016

Laser & Photonics Reviews

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A proof-of-concept of space-borne laser filamentation for atmospheric remote sensing is presented. The remote generation of laser filaments from an Earth-orbiting satellite is shown by numerical simulations to be theoretically possible for a large range of laser parameters. The model includes a realistic representation of the stratified atmosphere and accounts for multi-species ionization and the dependence of air density upon the molecule type and altitude profile. The remote generation of a white light continuum extending from 350 nm to 1.1 μm within the filament is demonstrated, and hereby proposed as an atmospheric in-situ light source for monitoring greenhouse gases and pollutants on a global scale by light detection and ranging (lidar) techniques. Scaling laws are also derived for estimating the filament altitude as a function of peak pulse power (3 GW-3 TW), beam radii (10-200 cm) and for three different curvatures (300, 390, 500 km) for femtosecond infrared (800 nm) pulses. We find that operating conditions for remote supercontinuum generation are already available with current ground-based mobile laser technology and within reach of future space laser systems.

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“…5 To minimize the risk of damage during long-term operation and optimize the working point, it is important to know the laser-induced damage thresholds (LIDTs) of the optical components. Recently, an existing LIDT setup 6 was equipped with a 500-mJ Innoslab-based MOPA system, which was designed and built at ILT. 7,8 To qualify the optical components at 1645 nm with an ISO 11254-2 compliant LIDT measurement, pulse energies up to 100 mJ are required.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Demonstration of a 100-mJ OPO/OPA for future lidar applications and laser-induced damage threshold testing of optical components for MERLIN

et al. 2017

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Abstract. In the field of atmospheric research, lidar is a powerful technology that can measure gas or aerosol concentrations, wind speed, or temperature profiles remotely. To conduct such measurements globally, spaceborne systems are advantageous. Pulse energies in the 100-mJ range are required to achieve highly accurate, longitudinal resolved measurements. Measuring concentrations of specific gases, such as CH 4 or CO 2 , requires output wavelengths in the IR-B, which can be addressed by optical-parametric frequency conversion. An OPO/ OPA frequency conversion setup was designed and built as a demonstration module to address the 1.6-μm range. The pump laser is an Nd:YAG-MOPA system, consisting of a stable oscillator and two subsequent Innoslab-based amplifier stages that deliver up to 500 mJ of output pulse energy at 100 Hz repetition frequency. The OPO is inherited from the OPO design for the CH 4 lidar instrument on the French-German climate satellite methane remote-sensing lidar mission (MERLIN). To address the 100-mJ regime, the OPO output beam is amplified in a subsequent multistage OPA. With potassium titanyl phosphate as nonlinear medium, the OPO/OPA delivered more than 100 mJ of output energy at 1645 nm from 450 mJ of the pump energy and a pump pulse duration of 30 ns. This corresponds to a quantum conversion efficiency of about 25%. In addition to demonstrating optical performance for future lidar systems, this laser will be part of a laser-induced damage thresholds test facility, which will be used to qualify optical components especially for the MERLIN. © The Authors.Published by SPIE under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License. Distribution or reproduction of this work in whole or in part requires full attribution of the original publication, including its DOI.

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Space-qualified laser system for the BepiColombo Laser Altimeter

Cited by 17 publications

References 55 publications

The BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA): a post-launch summary

The BepiColombo Laser Altimeter (BELA): a post-launch summary

Spaceborne laser filamentation for atmospheric remote sensing

Demonstration of a 100-mJ OPO/OPA for future lidar applications and laser-induced damage threshold testing of optical components for MERLIN

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