Manufacturing of an airborne demonstrator of ALADIN: the direct detection Doppler wind lidar for ADM-Aeolus

Abstract

Due for launch in 2008, the Atmospheric Dynamics Mission (ADM-Aeolus) has been selected as ESA's second Earth Explorer Core Missions within its Living Planet Programme. Its payload aims at providing measurements of atmospheric wind profiles with global coverage. The key element of ADM-Aeolus is the Atmospheric LAser Doppler Lidar INstrument (ALADIN), a Direct Detection Doppler Lidar in the ultra-violet spectral region operating on aerosol and molecular backscatter signals in parallel. The ALADIN instrument belongs to a completely new class of active optical earth-observation payloads with limited power requirements and high reliability over a three-year lifetime. It will be the first European Lidar in space. Technological challenges have been addressed in an early stage by a pre-development programme that consisted of designing, manufacturing and testing a functional representative model of the receiver of ALADIN (the Pre-Development Model, PDM), and a breadboard of the transmitter. The pre-development programme has been successfully completed and both receivers and transmitter are being refurbished in an airborne configuration. The ALADIN airborne instrument demonstrator (A2D) will be used for ground and airborne campaigns prior to the launch of the satellite. This paper presents the main characteristics of the airborne instrument and the goals of the campaigns.