How to cite this article: Botai CM, Combrinck L. Global geopotential models from Satellite Laser Ranging data with geophysical applications: A review. S Afr J Sci. 2012;108(3/4), Art. #662, 10 pages. http:// dx.doi.org/10.4102/sajs. v108i3/4.662 The launch of artificial satellites (as early as in 1957), specifically the launch of the first laser tracked satellite, Beacon-B, in 1964, has provide...

In this paper, we have simulated the excitation of wake fields in the interaction of an intensive laser pulses having Half-Sine and Gaussian time envelopes with a fully ionized cold plasma using particle in cell (PIC) method. We investigated the dependency of wake filed amplitude to different laser and plasma parameters such as laser wavelength, pulse duration and electron number density. In ad...

Laser inter-satellite links (LISLs) between satellites in a free-space optical satellite network (FSOSN) can be divided into two classes: permanent LISLs (PLs) and temporary (TLs). TLs are not desirable next-generation FSOSNs (NG-FSOSNs) due to high LISL setup time, but they may become feasible next-next-generation (NNG-FSOSNs). Using the constellation for Phase I of Starlink, we study impact o...

Accurate position and orientation data are the bases for successful navigation. In this paper, we design and analyze the micro-navigation satellite network that share orientation information among the satellite network. Satellites use GPS, IMU and lasers to align with each other, transferring and sharing the accurate absolute and relative orientation information. Our design includes a GPS and I...

The ultimate goal of the satellite laser ranging is the millimeter precision and accuracy. To achieve this goal, all the individual contributors to the ranging error budget must be well below millimeter level. The best existing ground based ranging systems are capable to achieve millimeter ranging precision when ranging to short distance terrestrial targets. However, ranging to Earth orbiting s...

Homoclinic chaos is characterized by regular geometric orbits occurring at erratic times. Phase synchronization at the average repetition frequency is achieved by a tiny periodic modulation of a control parameter. An experiment has been carried on a CO(2) laser with feedback, set in a parameter range where homoclinic chaos occurs. Any offset of the modulation frequency from the average induces ...

Laser range imaging is an upcoming data source for many fields of research. Although many methods are proposed for finding surfaces and classifying points, finding the bounds of these surfaces is still a difficult problem. We propose a method for finding, in a point set of size n, a rectangle that contains a predefined subset of the points and none of the other points in O(n log n) time. Furthe...

Nondiffracting beams are useful for alignment applications because the size of the beam does not change as the beam propagates. In this research we report a technique that allows for distance measurements with nondiffracting beams. With our approach a diffractive optical element is designed that generates two off-axis, tilted, nondiffracting Bessel function beams. These beams intersect at a des...