An Overview of Ball Flash LIDAR and Related Technology Development

Ball Aerospace has been developing Flash LIDAR systems for more than 7 years, and space qualified their first system on the Sensor Test for Orion Relative-navigation Risk Mitigation (STORRM) mission in May of 2011 on STS-134. The STORRM unit demonstrated the capabilities of the flash LIDAR system for relative navigation, but other applications exist, including science applications, and landing risk mitigation on Earth and other planets. This paper provides an overview of flash LIDAR sensor systems, describes the applications and scenarios where they provide advantages over scanning systems, and provides an overview of related technology development efforts at Ball Aerospace. The current development efforts include relative navigation applications, 6-DOF relative pose determination, landing hazard detection, electronic laser beam steering, and sensor upgrades that include electronic architecture modifications.

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