A Laser Altimeter for Bepicolombo

Abstract

The first European development of a laser altimeter for a planetary mission will be built by a consortium led by the Physikalisches Institut of the University of Bern (UBE) and the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt, Institut für Planetenforschung (DLR-PF). Technology studies by both groups have investigated several different concepts with a view to providing an experiment for the Mercury Planetary Orbiter (MPO) of the BepiColombo mission. Compared to Messenger, the MPO has a vastly superior orbit for laser altimetry which will allow an altimeter, with capabilities comparable to that of the MLA, to produce a reference data set to the entire surface of the panet. Using present assumptions of the orbit, data will be returned along ground-tracks seperated by less than 25 km at a spatial resolution along track of about 150 m and a vertical resolution of less than 1 m. The presentation will describe the basic features of the proposed system illustrate its capabilities with simulations.