OPTICAL DESIGN OF A MINIATURISED LASER ALTIMETER IMPLEMENTING SINGLE-PHOTON COUNTING DETECTION FOR TOPOGRAPHIC MAPPING USING SMALL SATELLITES

Kurzfassung

The goal of the current project is to pave the path for adapting the technology developed with BELA and GALA to the new scales being explored by small satellites and CubeSats. Indeed, the mass of the instruments (15 kg for BELA, 25 kg for GALA), their power consumption of about 50 W, and their receiver apertures of about 25 cm diameter [3,4] are not conducive to use on small satellite platforms. Here, we will report on the development of an elegant breadboard for a 3 CubeSat-Units laser altimeter implementing a transceiver design with an 8 cm aperture using Commercial Off-The-Shelf components (COTS) and a SPAD (Single Photon Avalanche Diode) array detector.