This technology provides a scanning solution to increase the horizontal scanning area for the CPL lidar system used in NASA Earth Science missions. The mission is remote sensing of atmospheric clouds and aerosols, and cloud-aerosol interactions. The CPL system operates from the Global Hawk, ER-2 and Proteous platforms. The transmitter/scanner subsystem is scalable to operate in applications such as remote sensing from Satellites. Commercial and military applications for a UAV based compact, efficient, wide field of regard scanning lidar include active multispectral imaging for day night missions such as crop management, forest and forest fire management, 3D imaging for law enforcement, and Imaging Laser Altimetry. Sensor fusion is also possible with this scan approach and would enable simultaneous thermal imaging and UV, visible, and/or NIR imaging with high 3D resolution in a compact, efficient scanning lidar that could operate at high altitude with a large field of regard.
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