NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is developing a Europa Lander astrobiology mission concept to search for biosignatures within Europa’s subsurface. However, Europa’s rugged terrain presents a number of physical hazards for landing. MIT Lincoln Laboratory is designing a radiation-hardened real-time direct-detection LIDAR system at 532nm to aid with autonomous hazard avoidance and landing site selection for this Europa Lander concept. The detector for this system is a 2048x32 array of silicon Geiger-mode APDs and covers the required field-of-view in one dimension, removing the need for 2D stitching and enabling real-time data processing. Detector design, improvements for radiation tolerance and component characterization results are presented.


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    Title :

    A Direct Detection LiDAR Detector for the Europa Lander Concept



    Publication date :

    2022-04-03


    Type of media :

    Preprint


    Type of material :

    No indication


    Language :

    English



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