Since 1983, the current network of NASA Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) stations used an Nd:YAG oscillator cavity in an active-passive configuration to generate 150-200 psec (2mj) 1064nm pulses for satellite ranging. This cavity (active-passive) used a liquid (chlorobenzene) dye cell as the passive saturable absorber. The dye consisted of Exciton (Kodak-9740) Q-Switch I dye and monochlorobenzene ...

The accuracy reached in the past few years by Satellite Laser Ranging (SLR) allows for measuring even tiny features of the Earth’s gravitational field predicted by Einstein’s General Relativity by means of artificial satellites. The gravitomagnetic dragging of the orbit of a test body is currently under measurement by analyzing a suitable combination of the orbital residuals of LAGEOS and LAGEO...

We present a novel method for fully automated exterior calibration of a 2D scanning laser range sensor that attains accurate pose with respect to a fixed 3D reference frame. This task is crucial for applications that attempt to recover self-consistent 3D environment maps and produce accurately registered or fused sensor data. A key contribution of our approach lies in the design of a class of c...

With the success of Mars Pathfinders Sojourner rover, a new era of planetary exploration has opened, with demand for highly capable mobile robots.mobile communication device is a small robot, originally constructed to allow. Up to now a lot of robots like the NASA Pathfinder were built to fulfil dedicated.Path Finding Mobile Robotics. Laser Range Finder.

During the development of the Geoscience Laser Altimeter System (GLAS), launched in 2003, it was understood that the values of surface pusle reflectance was an important design parameter for satellite laser altimeters and that the magnitude of observed pulse reflectance would have valuable applications. Thus a significant effort was made to obtain calibrated surface pulse reflectance from GLAS ...

To realize the full potential of satellite laser ranging for accurate geodesy, it is crucial that all systematic effects in the measurements are taken into account. This paper derives new values for the so-called center-of-mass corrections for three geodetic satellites that are regularly tracked and used in geodetic studies. Optical responses of the twin satellites, Starlette and Stella, and th...

In the framework of the GRIM series of gravity field models, the CNES/GRGS GINS precise orbit determination software has been adapted to dynamic GPS data processing. That is simultaneous processing of all available observables (i.e. GPS, DORIS, Laser) and all available satellite orbits (i.e. GPS, TOPEX/POSEIDON) can now be performed. The TOPEX/POSEIDON (T/P) mission satellite is equipped with a...

The damages and logical failures in dierent parts of a satellite may occur during a solar event, when a bulk of solar energetic particles approaching the Earth. During solar events, these particles may cause extensive damages which are even permanent (hard errors). A way of damage reduction is designing a proper coating as the fuselage. As protons are the major component of solar particles and ...