Navigation Doppler Lidar Performance at High Speed and Long Range

NASA is developing a Navigational Doppler LiDAR (NDL) for use in missions involving robotic and human landing scenarios on solar system bodies. The NDL provides unprecedented accuracy in position and velocity measurement for the guidance, navigation and control (GNC) subsystem of a spacecraft. NDL performance has been characterized over different phases of its development through ground tests, helicopter flight tests, and onboard rocket-powered test vehicles, however, none of these tests provided measurements over its full performance envelope. For this reason, a high speed rocket sled test was recently conducted to resolve both range and velocity up to the maximum limits of the NDL. This test campaign was performed at the Supersonic Naval Ordnance Research Tracks (SNORT) facility, Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake, as part of the Safe & Precise Landing and Integrated Capabilities Evolution (SPLICE) project.