Projects

• Lidar and Directed Energy Components
  • 2-micron Laser
  • Roof Periscope
  • AEROTEL Chopper Wheel
  • AROTEL Receiver for the SOLVE Mission
  • Fiber Optic Couplers
  • Raman Lidar Chimney
  • Telescope Assemblies
  • 400mm aperture elevation-over-azimuth scanner
  • Large aperture mirror mounts
    • SOR
    • ABLTB
  • Lidar-In-A-Box
  • Titanium-Sapphire Laser
  • Single Point Diamond Turning
• Complete Lidar/Active Instruments
  • Raman Airborne Spectroscopic Lidar (RASL)
  • LVIS
  • Micro-Pulse Lidar
  • THOR Lidar
  • Phasers - Prototype Holographic Atmospheric Scanner for Environmental Remote Sensing
  • HARLIE (Holographic Airborne Rotating Lidar Instrument Experiment) Hemisphere Scanning Stage
  • High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL)
  • GOLD
  • 2-micron CO2 Lidar
  • DAWN AIR1
• Support Equipment
  • ESTAR Calibration Scanner
  • Cloud Physics Lidar Handling Cart
• Aircraft Installations
  • ER-2 Doppler Radar Data System Enclosure
  • Cloud Radar System Data System Enclosure
  • King Air Rear Cargo Area Riser plate and electronics racks
  • King Air 4-bay electronics rack with shock isolation
  • RSP Instrument installation in King Air
  • HSRL instrument installation
  • 400mm aperture window port for King Air HSRL-247-X
  • Raman Airborne Spectroscopic Lidar (RASL)
  • RASL segmented window and external heat exchanger
  • LVIS installation in King Air
  • MASTER installation in King Air
  • HiWRAP in WB-57
• Complete Passive Optical Instruments
  • Offner Spectrometers (grating based)
  • Refractive Spectrometers
  • Lens assemblies
  • Telescope Assemblies
    • Conventional telescopes with glass optics
      • 150mm, 400mm CN, 400mm Newt, 200mm athermal for MPL
    • SPDT telescope
• RF Instruments
  • UAV Radar
  • HiWRAP
  • ER-2 Doppler Radar Data System Enclosure
  • Cloud Radar System Data System Enclosure
• Single Point Diamond Turning
  • Large Diameter Scanner
  • Lidar-In-A-Box
  • Diamond Turned Telescope Assemblies
    • 400mm series 1
    • 400mm series 2
    • 200mm
    • 150mm
    • 100mm
• Space-based Instruments
  • Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS)
    • Laser Pickoff System
    • Stellar Reference System - Bench Checkout Equipment
    • Fiber Optic Splitter
    • Light Emitting Diode Coupler
  • ISIR-AL
  • Simplesat Optical Microsatellite
  • HICO Spectrometers

THOR Lidar

Time Period

Spring 2000

Project Description

THOR stands for THickness from Offbeam Returns. This Lidar system is designed to estimate the thickness of clouds by measuring the size of the reflected halo resulting from a laser entering a cloud. A refractive telescope with approximately 7.5-inch (19.05-centimeter) aperture is used to gather the returned light and collect it into a custom designed fiber optic bundle. The fiber optic bundle routes specific sections of the light focused by the telescope into ten Hamamatsu detectors.

The THOR Lidar system is now being prepared for test flights in the NASA Wallops P-3 aircraft.