NASA's CASALS instrument bridges gaps in 3D maps of Earth's surface

A team of researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has developed a new instrument designed to eliminate blind spots between lines of lidar data on Earth's surface. A team of researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has developed a new instrument designed to eliminate blind spots between lines of lidar data on Earth's surface.

Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility: Add to Preferred Sources Credit: Alan Kabeš from Pexels A team of researchers at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) has developed a new instrument designed to eliminate blind spots. Built with support from NASA's Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO), the Concurrent Artificially-intelligent Spectrometry Lidar System (CASALS) could help researchers map the features of Earth's surface in detail.

Rather than mechanically steering a laser with moving mirrors, CASALS steers light using wavelength itself, generating a continuous, 3D swath of the ground below. Instead, CASALS uses a fast-pulsing, tunable "seed" laser centered at 1, 040 nanometers, rapidly cycling through 256 unique wavelengths as it pulses through an optical component with a microscopic pattern of ridges called a transmission grating.

Because light bends at slightly different angles depending on its exact wavelength, the grating naturally "steers" each of the 256 pulses into a distinct position across the flight path. In November 2024, an airborne CASALS prototype flew aboard NASA's B200 King Air aircraft.

The instrument produced science-quality data sets on its first campaign, exceeding the team's expectations. This worked really well from the first time we flew it, which is pretty impressive," said Yorks.

Flying at an altitude of roughly 5 kilometers (3.1 miles), CASALS can distinguish individual tree branches and subtle changes in ground elevation, thanks to its 22-centimeter horizontal resolution.

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