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Greater emphasis is being placed on reducing both the carbon footprint and energy cost of buildings. A building's energy usage depends upon many factors one of the most important is the local weather and climate conditions to which it's electrical, heating and air conditioning systems must respond. Incorporating renewable energy systems, including solar systems, to supplement energy supplies and increase energy efficiency is important to saving costs and reducing emissions. Also retrofitting technologies to buildings requires knowledge of building performance in its current state, potential future climate state, projection of potential savings with capital investment, and then monitoring the performance once the improvements are made. RETScreen Plus is a performance analysis software module that supplies the needed functions of monitoring current building performance, targeting projected energy efficiency improvements and verifying improvements once completed. This tutorial defines the functions of RETScreen Plus as well as outlines the general procedure for monitoring and reporting building energy performance.

An inexpensive lightweight ozone lidar telescope was designed, constructed and operated during an ozone lidar field campaign. This report summarizes the design parameters and performance of the plastic Fresnel lens telescope and shows the ozone lidar performance compared to Zemax calculations.

In order to facilitate the use of electric vehicles at NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC), charging stations should be made available to LaRC employees. The implementation of charging stations would decrease the need for gasoline thus decreasing CO2 emissions improving local air quality and providing a cost savings for LaRC employees. A charging station pilot program is described that would install stations as the need increased and also presents a business model that pays for the electricity used and installation at no cost to the government.

Increasing global temperature, weather patterns with above average storm intensities, and higher sea levels have been identified as phenomena associated with global climate change. As a causal system, climate change could contribute to vector borne diseases in humans. Vectors of concern originate from the vicinity of Langley Research Center include mosquitos and ticks that transmit disease that originate regionally, nationwide, or from outside the US. Recognizing changing conditions, vector borne diseases propagate under climate change conditions, and understanding the conditions in which they may exist or propagate, presents opportunities for monitoring their progress and mitigating their potential impacts through communication, continued monitoring, and adaptation. Personnel comprise a direct and fundamental support to NASA mission success, continuous and improved understanding of climatic conditions, and the resulting consequence of disease from these conditions, helps to reduce risk in terrestrial space technologies, ground operations, and space research. This research addresses conditions which are attributed to climatic conditions which promote environmental conditions conducive to the increase of disease vectors. This investigation includes evaluation of local mosquito population count and rainfall data for statistical correlation and identification of planning recommendations unique to LaRC, other NASA Centers to assess adaptation approaches, Center-level planning strategies.

The health of an estuarine ecosystem is largely driven by the abundance of dissolved oxygen and nitrogen available for maintenance of plant and animal life. An investigation was conducted to quantify the concentration of dissolved molecular oxygen and nitrogen in water by means of Raman spectroscopy. This technique is proposed for the remote sensing of dissolved oxygen in the Chesapeake Bay, which will be utilized by aircraft in order to survey large areas in real-time. A proof of principle system has been developed and the specifications are being honed to maximize efficiency for the final application. The theoretical criteria of the research, components of the experimental system, and key findings are presented in this report

This report on a Virginia Institute for Marine Science project demonstrates that the sub-grid modeling technology (now as part of Chesapeake Bay Inundation Prediction System, CIPS) can incorporate high-resolution Lidar measurements provided by NASA Langley Research Center into the sub-grid model framework to resolve detailed topographic features for use as a hydrological transport model for run-off simulations within NASA Langley and Langley Air Force Base. The rainfall over land accumulates in the ditches/channels resolved via the model sub-grid was tested to simulate the run-off induced by heavy precipitation. Possessing both the capabilities for storm surge and run-off simulations, the CIPS model was then applied to simulate real storm events starting with Hurricane Isabel in 2003. It will be shown that the model can generate highly accurate on-land inundation maps as demonstrated by excellent comparison of the Langley tidal gauge time series data (CAPABLE.larc.nasa.gov) and spatial patterns of real storm wrack line measurements with the model results simulated during Hurricanes Isabel (2003), Irene (2011), and a 2009 Nor'easter. With confidence built upon the model's performance, sea level rise scenarios from the ICCP (International Climate Change Partnership) were also included in the model scenario runs to simulate future inundation cases.

A simulation of a ground based Ultra-Violet Differential Absorption Lidar (UV-DIAL) receiver system was performed under realistic daytime conditions to understand how range and lidar performance can be improved for a given UV pulse laser energy. Calculations were also performed for an aerosol channel transmitting at 3 W. The lidar receiver simulation studies were optimized for the purpose of tropospheric ozone measurements. The transmitted lidar UV measurements were from 285 to 295 nm and the aerosol channel was 527-nm. The calculations are based on atmospheric transmission given by the HITRAN database and the Modern Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications (MERRA) meteorological data. The aerosol attenuation is estimated using both the BACKSCAT 4.0 code as well as data collected during the CALIPSO mission. The lidar performance is estimated for both diffuseirradiance free cases corresponding to nighttime operation as well as the daytime diffuse scattered radiation component based on previously reported experimental data. This analysis presets calculations of the UV-DIAL receiver ozone and aerosol measurement range as a function of sky irradiance, filter bandwidth and laser transmitted UV and 527-nm energy

The protection of NASA Langley Research Center from future hurricanes is important in order to allow the center to fulfill its mission. The impact of the center is not only great within NASA but the economy as well. The infrastructure of the Center is under potential risk in the future because of more intense hurricanes with higher speed winds and flooding. A potential method of protecting the Center s facilities is the placement of a windbreak barrier composed of indigenous trees. The New Town program that is now in progress creates a more condensed area of focus for protection. A potential design for an efficient tree windbreak barrier for Langley Research center is proposed.

An investigation was conducted to evaluate photovoltaic (solar electric systems) systems for a single building at NASA Langley as a representative case for alternative sustainable power generation. Building 1250 in the Science Directorate is comprised of office and laboratory space, and currently uses approximately 250,000 kW/month of electrical power with a projected use of 200,000 kW/month with additional conservation measures. The installation would be applied towards a goal for having Building 1250 classified as a net-zero energy building as it would produce as much energy as it uses over the course of a year. Based on the facility s electrical demand, a photovoltaic system and associated hardware were characterized to determine the optimal system, and understand the possible impacts from its deployment. The findings of this investigation reveal that the 1.9 MW photovoltaic electrical system provides favorable and robust results. The solar electric system should supply the needed sustainable power solution especially if operation and maintenance of the system will be considered a significant component of the system deployment.

Aerosol distributions from two aircraft lidar campaigns conducted in the California Central Valley are compared in order to identify seasonal variations. Aircraft lidar flights were conducted in June 2003 and February 2008. While the PM2.5 concentration is highest in the winter, the aerosol optical depth measured from MODIS is highest in the summer. A seasonal comparison shows that PM2.5 in the winter can exceed summer PM2.5 by 55%, while summer AOD exceeds winter AOD by 43%. Higher temperatures wildfires in the summer produce elevated aerosol layers that are detected by satellite measurements, but not surface particulate matter monitors. Measurements of the boundary layer height from lidar instruments are necessary to incorporate satellite measurements with air quality measurements.

A small compact ozone differential absorption lidar capable of being deployed on a small aircraft or unpiloted atmospheric vehicle (UAV) has been tested. The Ce:LiCAF tunable UV laser is pumped by a quadrupled Nd:YLF laser. Test results on the laser transmitter demonstrated 1.4 W in the IR and 240 mW in the green at 1000 Hz. The receiver consists of three photon-counting channels, which are a far field PMT, a near field UV PMT, and a green PMT. Each channel was tested for their saturation characteristics.

Narrow-band filters in the form of phase-shifted Fabry-Perot Bragg gratings incorporated into optical fibers are being developed for differential-absorption lidar (DIAL) instruments used to measure concentrations of atmospheric water vapor. The basic idea is to measure the relative amounts of pulsed laser light scattered from the atmosphere at two nearly equal wavelengths, one of which coincides with an absorption spectral peak of water molecules and the other corresponding to no water vapor absorption. As part of the DIAL measurement process, the scattered light is made to pass through a filter on the way to a photodetector. Omitting other details of DIAL for the sake of brevity, what is required of the filter is to provide a stop band that: Surrounds the water-vapor spectral absorption peaks at a wavelength of 946 nm, Has a spectral width of at least a couple of nanometers, Contains a pass band preferably no wider than necessary to accommodate the 946.0003-nm-wavelength water vapor absorption peak [which has 8.47 pm full width at half maximum (FWHM)], and Contains another pass band at the slightly shorter wavelength of 945.9 nm, where there is scattering of light from aerosol particles but no absorption by water molecules. Whereas filters used heretofore in DIAL have had bandwidths of =300 pm, recent progress in the art of fiber-optic Bragg-grating filters has made it feasible to reduce bandwidths to less than or equal to 20 pm and thereby to reduce background noise. Another benefit of substituting fiber-optic Bragg-grating filters for those now in use would be significant reductions in the weights of DIAL instruments. Yet another advantage of fiber-optic Bragg-grating filters is that their transmission spectra can be shifted to longer wavelengths by heating or stretching: hence, it is envisioned that future DIAL instruments would contain devices for fine adjustment of transmission wavelengths through stretching or heating of fiber-optic Bragg-grating filters nominally designed and fabricated to have transmission wavelengths that, in the absence of stretching, would be slightly too short.

This system study proposes the deployment of a water vapor Differential Absorption LIDAR (DIAL) system on an Altair unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform. The Altair offers improved payload weight and volume performance, and longer total flight time as compared to other commercial UAV's. This study has generated a preliminary design for an Altair based water vapor DIAL system. The design includes a proposed DIAL schematic, a review of mechanical challenges such as temperature and humidity stresses on UAV deployed DIAL systems, an assessment of the available capacity for additional instrumentation (based on the proposed design), and an overview of possible weight and volume improvements associated with the use of customized electronic and computer hardware, and through the integration of advanced fiber-optic and laser products. The results of the study show that less than 17% of the available weight, less than 19% of the volume capacity, and approximately 11% of the electrical capacity is utilized by the proposed water vapor DIAL system on the Altair UAV.

Ozone (O3) and aerosol scattering ratio profiles were obtained from airborne lidar measurements on thirty-eight aircraft flights over seven aircraft deployments covering the latitudes of 40 deg.-85 deg.N between 4 February and 23 May 2000 as part of the TOPSE (Tropospheric Ozone Production about the Spring Equinox) field experiment. The remote and in situ O3 measurements were used together to produce a vertically-continuous O3 profile from near the surface to above the tropopause. Ozone, aerosol, and potential vorticity (PV) distributions were used together to identify the presence of pollution plumes and stratospheric intrusions. The number of observed pollution plumes was found to increase into the spring along with a significant increase in aerosol loading. Ozone was found to increase in the middle free troposphere (4-6 km) at high latitudes (60 deg.-85 deg. N) by an average of 4.3 ppbv/mo from about 55 ppbv in early February to over 72 ppbv in mid-May. The average aerosol scattering ratios in the same region increased at an average rate of 0.37/mo from about 0.35 to over 1.7. Ozone and aerosol scattering were highly correlated over entire field experiment. Based on the above results and the observed aircraft in-situ measurements, it was estimated that stratospherically-derived O3 accounted for less than 20% of the observed increase in mid tropospheric O3 at high latitudes. The primary cause of the observed O3 increase was found to be the photochemical production of O3 in pollution plumes.

Differential absorption lidar (DIAL) systems are being deployed to make vertical profile measurements of atmospheric water vapor from ground and airborne platforms. One goal of this work is to improve the technology of such DIAL systems that they could be deployed on space-based platforms. Since background radiation reduces system performance, it is important to reduce it. One way to reduce it is to narrow the bandwidth of the optical receiver system. However, since the DIAL technique uses two or more wavelengths, in this case separated by 0.1 nm, a fixed-wavelength narrowband filter that would encompass both wavelengths would be broader than required for each line, approximately 0.02 nm. The approach employed in this project is to use a pair of tunable narrowband reflective fiber Bragg gratings. The Bragg gratings are germanium-doped silica core fiber that is exposed to ultraviolet radiation to produce index-of-refraction changes along the length of the fiber. The gratings can be tuned by stretching. The backscattered laser radiation is transmitted through an optical circulator to the gratings, reflected back to the optical circulator by one of the gratings, and then sent to a photodiode. The filter reflectivities were >90 percent, and the overall system efficiency was 30 percent.

A new potential DIAL laser transmitter is described that uses solid-state dye laser materials to make a simpler, more compact, lower mass laser system. Two solid-state dye laser materials were tested to evaluate their performance in a laser oscillator cavity end pumped by a pulsed Nd:YAG laser at 532 nm. The polymer host polymethyl-methacrylate was injected with a pyrromethene laser dye, PM 580, or PM 597. A narrowband laser oscillator cavity was constructed to produce visible wavelengths of 578 and 600 nm which were frequency doubled into the UV region (299 or 300 nm) by using a BBO crystal, resulting in a maximum energy of 11 mJ at a wavelength of 578 nm when pumped by the Nd:YAG laser at an energy of 100 mJ (532 nm). A maximum output energy of 378 microJ was achieved in the UV region at a wavelength of 289 nm but lasted only 2000 laser shots at a repetition rate of 10 Hz. The results are promising and show that a solid-state dye laser based ozone DIAL system is possible with improvements in the design of the laser transmitter.

Development of advanced differential absorption lidar (DIAL) receivers is very important to increase the accuracy of atmospheric water vapor measurements. A major component of such receivers is the optical detector. In the near-infrared wavelength range avalanche photodiodes (APD's) are the best choice for higher signal-to-noise ratio, where there are many water vapor absorption lines. In this study, characterization experiments were performed to evaluate a group of silicon-based APD's. The APD's have different structures representative of different manufacturers. The experiments include setups to calibrate these devices, as well as characterization of the effects of voltage bias and temperature on the responsivity, surface scans, noise measurements, and frequency response measurements. For each experiment, the setup, procedure, data analysis, and results are given and discussed. This research was done to choose a suitable APD detector for the development of an advanced atmospheric water vapor differential absorption lidar detection system operating either at 720, 820, or 940 nm. The results point out the benefits of using the super low ionization ratio (SLIK) structure APD for its lower noise-equivalent power, which was found to be on the order of 2 to 4 fW/Hz(sup (1/2)), with an appropriate optical system and electronics. The water vapor detection systems signal-to-noise ratio will increase by a factor of 10.

Measurement of atmospheric water vapor is very important for understanding the Earth's climate and water cycle. The remote sensing Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) technique is a powerful method to perform such measurement from aircraft and space. This thesis describes a new advanced detection system, which incorporates major improvements regarding sensitivity and size. These improvements include a low noise advanced avalanche photodiode detector, a custom analog circuit, a 14-bit digitizer, a microcontroller for on board averaging and finally a fast computer interface. This thesis describes the design and validation of this new water vapor DIAL detection system which was integrated onto a small Printed Circuit Board (PCB) with minimal weight and power consumption. Comparing its measurements to an existing DIAL system for aerosol and water vapor profiling validated the detection system.

A 6-MHz 16-bit waveform digitizer was evaluated for use in atmospheric differential absorption lidar (DIAL) measurements of ozone. The digitizer noise characteristics were evaluated, and actual ozone DIAL atmospheric returns were digitized. This digitizer could replace computer-automated measurement and control (CAMAC)-based commercial digitizers and improve voltage accuracy.

Measurements of global atmosphere ozone concentrations call for flexible lidar systems that can be operated from an unpiloted atmospheric vehicle (UAV) to reduce the cost of measurement missions. A lidar receiver system consisting of a fiber-optic-coupled telescope has been designed and tested for this purpose. The system weight is 13 kg and its volume of 0.06 m 3 would fit into the payload compartment of a Perseus B UAV. The optical efficiency of the telescope is 37 percent at 288 nm and 64 percent at 300 nm. Atmospheric measurements with a DIAL laser system have been performed, and the measured ozone density has matched the data from ozonesondes to an altitude of 7 km.

Avalanche photodiodes (APDS) are quantum optical detectors that are used for visible and near infrared optical detection applications. Although APDs are compact, rugged, and have an internal gain mechanism that is suitable for low light intensity; their responsivity, and therefore their output, is strongly dependent on the device temperature. Thermoelectric coolers (TEC) offers a suitable solution to this problem. A TEC is a solid state cooling device, which can be controlled by changing its current. TECs are compact and rugged, and they can precisely control the temperature to within 0.1 C with more than a 150 C temperature gradient between its surfaces. In this Memorandum, a proportional integral (PI) temperature controller for APDs using a TEC is discussed. The controller is compact and can successfully cool the APD to almost 0 C in an ambient temperature environment of up to 27 C.

The measurement of atmospheric water vapor is very important for understanding the Earth's climate and water cycle. The lidar atmospheric sensing experiment (LASE) is an instrument designed and operated by the Langley Research Center for high precision water vapor measurements. The design details of a new water vapor lidar detection system that improves the measurement sensitivity of the LASE instrument by a factor of 10 are discussed. The new system consists of an advanced, very low noise, avalanche photodiode (APD) and a state-of-the-art signal processing circuit. The new low-power system is also compact and lightweight so that it would be suitable for space flight and unpiloted atmospheric vehicles (UAV) applications. The whole system is contained on one small printed circuit board (9 x 15 sq cm). The detection system is mounted at the focal plane of a lidar receiver telescope, and the digital output is read by a personal computer with a digital data acquisition card.

A new unpiloted air vehicle (UAV) based water vapor DIAL system will be described. This system is expected to offer lower operating costs, longer test duration and severe weather capabilities. A new high-efficiency, compact, light weight, diode-pumped, tunable Cr:LiSAF laser will be developed to meet the UAV payload weight and size limitations and its constraints in cooling capacity, physical size and payload. Similarly, a new receiver system using a single mirror telescope and an avalanche photo diode (APD) will be developed. Projected UAV parameters are expected to allow operation at altitudes up to 20 km, endurance of 24 hrs and speed of 400 km/hr. At these conditions measurements of water vapor at an uncertainty of 2-10% with a vertical resolution of 200 m and horizontal resolution of 10 km will be possible.

Measurement of atmospheric water vapor has become a major requirement for understanding moist-air processes. Differential absorption lidar (DIAL) is a technique best suited for the measurement of atmospheric water vapor. NASA Langley Research Center is continually developing improved DIAL systems. One aspect of current development is focused on the enhancement of a DIAL receiver by applying state-of-the-art technology in building a new compact detection system that will be placed directly on the DIAL receiver telescope. The newly developed detection system has the capability of being digitally interfaced with a simple personal computer, using a discrete input/output interface. This has the potential of transmitting digital data over relatively long distances instead of analog signals, which greatly reduces measurement noise. In this paper, we discuss some results from the new compact water vapor DIAL detection system which includes a silicon based avalanche photodiode (APD) detector, a 14-bit, 10-MHz waveform digitizer, a microcontroller and other auxiliary electronics. All of which are contained on a small printed-circuit-board. This will significantly reduce the weight and volume over the current CAMAC system and eventually will be used in a water vapor DIAL system on an unpiloted atmospheric vehicle (UAV) aircraft, or alternatively on an orbiting spacecraft.

A fiber-optic coupled telescope of low complexity was constructed and tested. The major loss mechanisms of the optical system have been characterized. Light collected by the receiver mirror is focused onto an optical fiber, and the output of the fiber is filtered by an interference filter and then focused onto an APD detector. This system was used in lidar field measurements with a 532-nm Nd:YAG laser beam. The results were encouraging. A numerical model used for calculation of the expected return signal agreed with the lidar return signal obtained. The assembled system was easy to align and operate and weighed about 8 kg for a 30 cm (12") mirror system. This weight is low enough to allow mounting of the fiber-optic telescope receiver system in a UAV. Furthermore, the good agreement between the numerical lidar model and the performance of the actual receiver system, suggests that this model may be used for estimation of the performance of this and other lidar systems in the future. Such telescopes are relatively easy to construct and align. The fiber optic cable allows easy placement of the optical detector in any position. These telescope systems should find widespread use in aircraft and space home DIAL water vapor receiver systems.

Laser remote sensing from aircraft has become a very important technique for observing ozone in the environment. NASA Langley has an active aircraft based research program which presently uses Nd:YAG-pumped dye lasers that are then doubled into the UV to probe both the stratosphere and troposphere for ozone using the differential absorption lidar (DIAL) technique. This large system can only fly on large (NASA DC-8, Electra) aircraft and has been deployed on many missions throughout the world. In the future it will be desirable to fly autonomous, lightweight, compact ozone DIAL instruments on unpiloted atmospheric vehicles (UAV) aircraft. Such aircraft could fly at high altitudes for extended times collecting science data without risk to the operator. Cost for such missions may be substantially reduced over present large aircraft based missions. Presently there are no ozone DIAL systems capable of flying on an UAV aircraft. In order to facilitate UAV missions, small more efficient laser transmitters need to be developed that emit approximately 25mJ near 300nm for each of the DIAL 'on' and 'off' line pulses. Also lightweight, compact DIAL receiver systems need to be built and demonstrated. Such receiver systems may incorporate fiber optic coupled telescopes for maximum light gathering capability per unit area, high quantum efficiency gated photomultiplier tubes with reasonable gain and very narrow-band filters for background light rejection with high light throughput. A compact high-performance 16-bit digitizer and a data storage system are also required. A conceptional design of such a UAV DIAL instrument is presented. Here a pulsed UV laser emits pulses into the atmosphere where elastic scattering occurs which results in light being scattered into the receiver telescope. The subject of this paper is the design, construction and testing of a robust, compact ozone DIAL receiver system that would be a prototype for eventual use in a UAV aircraft.

Signal-induced noise (SIN) is a common effect resulting when a photomultiplier tube (PMT) is saturated, for a brief moment, with a high intensity light pulse. After the laser pulse is sent into the atmosphere a very large light return, from either the near-field or a cloud, causes the PMT to momentarily saturate. The PMT is gated off at this time so no signal is seen at the anode. When the PMT gate is turned on, the far-field light return from the atmosphere is observed. This signal is distorted, however because of the addition of SIN to the received light signal causing a slower than expected decay of the atmospheric signal return. We have characterized SIN responses to varying parameters of the incident light on the PMT. These varied parameters included incident wavelength, PMT voltage, incident intensity, and tube type. We found that only the amplitude of the SIN was effected by varying PMT voltages and light intensities. The amplitude increased linearly as input light intensity increased. Different incident wavelengths at the same intensity did not effect the amplitude or the temporal behavior of the SIN response. Finally, different PMT tubes with similar physical structures exhibited similar SIN responses although with different amplitudes. The different amplitudes can be attributed to the different gains and operating voltages of each tube. These results suggest that SIN is caused by photocathode electron dynamics such as charge accumulation on internal PMT surfaces. These surfaces then emit the electrons slowly resulting in a long decay noise signal. With the SIN responses characterized we can now try to develop a method to reduce or eliminate SIN in DIAL systems.

A new 16-bit 6-MHz compact, lightweight waveform digitizer module has been tested using actual 300-nm lidar atmospheric returns. The noise level of this digitizer was tested and found to be substantially below the ozone number density to be measured. The digitizer is inexpensive and compact enough to be deployed in UAV aircraft and spacecraft environments. With 16-bit digitizers a resolution of 0.046 mV/step can be achieved, substantially improving resolution over 12-bit systems. This digitizer will find widespread use in future DIAL receiver systems.

Signal-induced noise is generated when a photomultiplier tube (PMT) is subjected to an intense light pulse. The PMT signal does not return to the dark current level after the signal is removed, but decays slowly (i.e., signal-induced noise). This is of practical significance for DIAL (Differential Absorption lidar) measurements where signal-induced noise decays are superimposed on the on-line (absorption) and off-line signals. Errors in the ozone density calculation result for stratosphere measurements. Other researchers have implemented mechanical choppers that block the intense pulse which may be from near field return scattering or scattering from a cloud. This configuration cannot be implemented for the DIAL system employed for aircraft measurements since the on-line and off-line pulses are 300 microseconds apart. A scheme has been developed in this study to electronically attenuate the signal induced noise. A ring electrode, external to the PMT photocathode, is utilized to perturb the electron trajectories between the photocathode and the first dynode. This effect has been used for position sensitive PMTs and suggested for gating PMTS.

In the DIAL technique, the water vapor concentration profile is determined by analyzing the lidar backscatter signals for laser wavelengths tuned 'on' and 'off' a water vapor absorption line. Desired characteristics of the on-line transmitted laser beam include: pulse energy greater than or equal to 100 mJ, high-resolution tuning capability (uncertainty less than 0.25 pm), good spectral stability (jitter less than 0.5 pm about the mean), and high spectral purity (greater than 99 percent). The off-line laser is generally detuned less than 100 pm away from the water vapor line. Its spectral requirements are much less stringent. In our past research, we developed and demonstrated the airborne DIAL technique for water vapor measurements in the 720-nm spectral region using a system based on an alexandrite laser as the transmitter for the on-line wavelength and a Nd:YAG laser-pumped dye laser for the off-line wavelength. This off-line laser has been replaced by a second alexandrite laser. Diode lasers are used to injection seed both lasers for frequency and linewidth control. This eliminates the need for the two intracavity etalons utilized in our previous alexandrite laser and thereby greatly reduces the risk of optical damage. Consequently, the transmitted pulse energy can be substantially increased, resulting in greater measurement range, higher data density, and increased measurement precision. In this paper, we describe the diode injection seed source, the two alexandrite lasers, and the device used to line lock the on-line seed source to the water vapor absorption feature.

An airborne differential absorption lidar (DIAL) system has been developed at the NASA Langley Research Center for the remote measurement of water vapor (H2O) and aerosols in the lower troposphere. Significant modifications to the laser transmitters and other major subsystems have been implemented during the past two years to improve the system's performance and field reliability. The modified system is to be flight tested in late 1994, and the system performance characteristics and preliminary atmospheric H2O and aerosol data from these flights are discussed in this paper.

A method of supplying power to a device such as a lunar rover located on a planetary surface is provided. At least one, and preferably three, laser satellites are set in orbit around the planet. Each satellite contains a nuclear reactor for generating electrical power. This electrical power is converted into a laser beam which is passed through an amplifying array and directed toward the device such as a lunar rover. The received laser beam is then converted into electrical power for use by the device.

An attempt was made to pump an alexandrite laser rod using a Tamarak solar simulator and also a tungsten-halogen lamp. A very low optical laser cavity was used to achieve the threshold minimum pumping-power requirement. Lasing was not achieved. The laser threshold optical-power requirement was calculated to be approximately 626 W/sq cm for a gain length of 7.6 cm, whereas the Tamarak simulator produces 1150 W/sq cm over a gain length of 3.3 cm, which is less than the 1442 W/sq cm required to reach laser threshold. The rod was optically pulsed with 200 msec pulses, which allowed the alexandrite rod to operate at near room temperature. The optical intensity-gain-length product to achieve laser threshold should be approximately 35,244 solar constants-cm. In the present setup, this product was 28,111 solar constants-cm.

Potential missions for microwave and laser power beaming in space are discussed. Power beaming options, millimeter wave technology, laser technology, lunar bases, spacecraft propulsion, and near-Earth applications are covered.

The objective was to compare a nuclear reactor-driven Sterling engine lunar base power source to a laser-to-electric converter with orbiting laser power station, each providing 1 MW of electricity to the lunar base. The comparison was made on the basis of total mass required in low-Earth-orbit for each system. This total mass includes transportation mass required to place systems in low-lunar orbit or on the lunar surface. The nuclear reactor with Sterling engines is considered the reference mission for lunar base power and is described first. The details of the laser-to-electric converter and mass are discussed. The next two solar-driven high-power laser concepts, the diode array laser or the iodine laser system, are discussed with associated masses in low-lunar-orbit. Finally, the payoff for laser-power beaming is summarized.

The objective of this mission study was to compare laser propulsion to chemical LOX/H2 and nuclear electric propulsion for the specific mission of delivering a 144-metric ton lunar base from low-Earth-orbit to low-lunar-orbit. The basis of comparison was total mass in low-Earth-orbit needed to accomplish this mission. The Office of Exploration approach to establishing the lunar base was to use two vehicles: a nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) vehicle to deliver cargo and a chemical vehicle to deliver humans. The NEP vehicle was reactor driven with a vehicle dry mass of 125 metric tons. The Office of Exploration study did not use chemical propulsion for cargo, but in the present study it was used for cargo for comparison to laser propulsion. This mission study assumes a high-power laser, either nuclear or solar electric-driven diode laser, is in orbit around Earth, beaming power to a laser propulsion vehicle. Laser power is only used for the LEO escape burn; other much lower-power burns are done with LOX/H2.

Laser threshold of 100 solar constants achieved. Using two xenon-arc solar simulators, lasing achieved with pentafluoroethyl iodide, a new alkyl iodide, at laser threshold of only 100 solar constants. Solar laser had lowest threshold observed to date. Output power and energy 350 mW and 45 mJ.