ATLID, ESA Atmospheric LIDAR Developement Status

The ATmospheric LIDAR ATLID[1] is part of the payload of the Earth Cloud and Aerosol Explorer[2] (EarthCARE) satellite mission, the sixth Earth Explorer Mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) Living Planet Programme. EarthCARE is a joint collaborative satellite mission conducted between ESA and the National Space Development Agency of Japan (JAXA) that delivers the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) instrument. The payload consists of four instruments on the same platform with the common goal to provide a picture of the 3D-dimensional spatial and the temporal structure of the radiative flux field at the top of atmosphere, within the atmosphere and at the Earth’s surface. This paper is presenting an updated status of the development of the ATLID instrument and its subsystem design. The instrument has recently completed its detailed design, and most of its subsystems are already under manufacturing of their Flight Model (FM) parts and running specific qualification activities. Clouds and aerosols are currently one of the biggest uncertainties in our understanding of the atmospheric conditions that drive the climate system. A better modelling of the relationship between clouds, aerosols and radiation is therefore amongst the highest priorities in climate research and weather prediction

ATLID, ESA Atmospheric LIDAR Developement Status

The ATmospheric LIDAR ATLID[1] is part of the payload of the Earth Cloud and Aerosol Explorer[2] (EarthCARE) satellite mission, the sixth Earth Explorer Mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) Living Planet Programme. EarthCARE is a joint collaborative satellite mission conducted between ESA and the National Space Development Agency of Japan (JAXA) that delivers the Cloud Profiling Radar (CPR) instrument. The payload consists of four instruments on the same platform with the common goal to provide a picture of the 3D-dimensional spatial and the temporal structure of the radiative flux field at the top of atmosphere, within the atmosphere and at the Earth’s surface. This paper is presenting an updated status of the development of the ATLID instrument and its subsystem design. The instrument has recently completed its detailed design, and most of its subsystems are already under manufacturing of their Flight Model (FM) parts and running specific qualification activities. Clouds and aerosols are currently one of the biggest uncertainties in our understanding of the atmospheric conditions that drive the climate system. A better modelling of the relationship between clouds, aerosols and radiation is therefore amongst the highest priorities in climate research and weather prediction

Active spectro-polarimetric imaging: signature modeling, imaging demonstrator and target detection

We report on the synthesis of our work on the analysis of active spectro-polarimetric imaging concept of real-world scenes. These synthesis extend from the investigation of depolarization mechanisms up to image analysis and processing. We show in particular that depolarization effects are wavelength dependent and strongly correlated with light absorption of materials. Multi-wavelength images of degree of polarization are recorded and analyzed, evidencing that the polarimetric image must be interpreted in conjunction with its counterpart intensity image in order to extract, the most relevant information from the scene. For real field operation, the noise characteristics of polarimetric images are also investigated under coherent laser illumination. The potential increase of target detection performance brought by properly processing the active polarimetric image is illustrated on a very low contrast scene