Miniaturized Flash Lidar for Landing Applications

Kongsberg Defence & Aerospace (KDA) and SINTEF are developing a flash-LIDAR for use in space and specifically for landing applications. The baseline is a compact 5 kg design without moving parts. The technology is based on time-of-flight (ToF) measurement of emitted laser pulses with the use of a Mega pixel CMOS camera. Each short high energy laser pulse illuminates the complete target area. By selecting different delay times for the camera gating and through real time processing of the sensor output, a three-dimensional image of the scene is generated. The technology is tolerant to sunlight illuminating the landing site. A narrow band optical filter is utilized to improve the signal to noise ratio. High resolution 3D maps can be generated at 500–300 m altitude. Lower resolution 3D maps can be generated for altitudes up to 1000 m. With minor modifications the flash-LIDAR can also be used for other missions like in-orbit-servicing and for planetary rovers.