Results of the pre-development of ALADIN, the direct detection Doppler wind lidar for ADM/Aeolus

Abstract

Due for launch in late 2007, the Atmospheric Dynamics Mission (ADM-Aeolus) has been selected as the second Earth Explorer Core Missions within ESA Living Planet Programme. Its payload aims at providing measurements of atmospheric wind profiles with global coverage. The key elecment of ADM-Aeolus is the Atmospheric LAser Doppler Lidar INstrument (ALADIN), a Direct Detection Doppler Lidar in the ultra-violet spectral region operating with aerosol and molecular backscatter signals in parallel. The ALADIN instrument belongs to a completely new class of 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 are addressed in an early stage by a pre-development programme that consists 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 is being established to validate the technologies used in the ALADIN design, evaluate the flight-worthiness of its major subsystems and verify the instrument overall performances. The purpose of this paper is to present the main achievements of the pre-development programme: environmental tests on the Pre-Development Model (thermal-vacuum and mechanical tests), development of the laser breadboards and assessment programme of the laser diodes.