National Aeronautics and Orbiting Planetary Atmospheric Lidar Space Administration Farzin Amzajerdian, NASA Langley Research Center, [email protected], 757‐864‐1533 Overview OPAL operation in orbit Orbiting Planetary Atmospheric Lidar (OPAL) is a multifunctional lidar instrument capable of providing global profiles of major atmospheric parameters: Winds, Density, Temperature, and Aerosols. OPAL beam is pointed to 2 fore and 2 OPAL capitalizes on recent advances achieved by NASA LaRC on highly aft directions making two sheets of efficient lasers and advanced coherent lidar components measurements in the atmosphere. Proposed lidar is substantially smaller than the ones proposed for Earth‐orbiting lidars by taking advantage of properties of targeted atmosphere such as: • High aerosol mixing ratio • Dominance by CO2 • Relaxed measurement accuracy and resolution Science: Global profiles of: Vector wind velocity, Single instrument offers higher data quality and significant reduction in atmospheric density, temperature, and complexity, mass, volume, and power compared to multiple systems aerosol and cloud opacity OPAL principal of operation Coverage ‒ Mars 100 km to surface ‒ Venus 120 km to 50 km High spatial resolution ‒ Vertical: 3 km ‒ Horizontal: Mars 10 km, Venus 20 km OPAL utilizes several NDL components and leverages technologies being developed under LaRC IRAD and SBIR projects NDL components that will be directly used in OPAL Orbiting Planetary Atmospheric Lidar (OPAL) Multifunctional instrument capable of global profiling of: “Vector Wind Velocity”, “Atmospheric Density”, “Temperature”, and “Aerosol and Cloud Opacity” OPAL provides essential atmospheric data for Climate Research, Weather Models, and Design of Future Landing Missions OPAL principal of operation Coverage OPAL beam is pointed to ‒ Mars: 100 km to surface 2 fore and 2 aft ‒ Venus: 120 km to 50 km directions making two High spatial resolution sheets of measurements ‒ Vertical: 3 km in the atmosphere. ‒ Horizontal: Mars 10 km, Venus 20 km.