Evolution in Lidar Technology for Commercial Lunar Missions

When iSpace’s Hakuto-R spacecraft crashed on the lunar surface, an early hypothesis emerged “One big rock.. could have negatively impacted the mission”. This highlights the risk of ‘blind’ landings based on available resolution Digital Elevation Models. This problem will only increase inline with the ambitious plans of ESA, NASA, and the CNSA for lunar exploration and exploitation. These involve increasingly hazardous landings around the irregular and rugged terrain of the south pole, where nobody has yet successfully performed a soft landing. MDA UK has developed a Lidar product line specifically designed around the needs of lunar landers: low power consumption because the power available during final descent is limited; high-speed long-range scans so that hazards can be detected far enough away to be avoided; dynamic scan correction so that the spacecraft does not need to hover and is able to perform corrective maneouvres mid-scan. Here we present testing and integration results.