ORNL DAAC Request for New GCMD Instrument: CASALS

[ORNL - yaxingwei]

Hi,

The ORNL DAAC needs help to add a new GCMD instrument keyword.

Instrument Abbreviation: CASALS
Instrument Full Name: Concurrent Artificially-intelligent Spectrometry and Adaptive Lidar System (CASALS)

Hierarchical Path:
Instruments > Earth Remote Sensing Instruments > Active Remote Sensing > Altimeters > Lidar/Laser Altimeters > CASALS


Description: The Concurrent Artificially-intelligent Spectrometry and Adaptive Lidar System (CASALS) is an airborne system developed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). It contains a swath-mapping Adaptive Wavelength Scanning Lidar (AWSL) operating in push broom mode along with three passive optical imaging systems, including a Headwall hyperspectral push-broom Visible-Near Infrared (VNIR) (400-1000 nm, 2.2nm spectral width) & Short Wavelength Infrared (SWIR) imager (1000-2500nm, 6nm spectral width), a Cuber Ultris hyperspectral VNIR and panchromatic cameras, and a natural color RGB frame camera. The CASALS was developed primarily to support NASA’s Surface Topography and Vegetation (STV) target observable to overcome the limitations of current spaceborne lidars – specifically their massive Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP) requirements and their inability to perform wide-area 3D swath mapping efficiently. The CASALS serves as a bridge to prove that these high-risk technologies can survive the rigors of flight before being deployed on satellite missions. One key advantage of CASALS is that its lidar pulses use 256 wavelengths, instead of a single wavelength of most lidar available currently. CASALS’s lidar uses non-mechanical beam steering, instead of heavy mechanical steering mirrors to aim laser pulses. The CASALS system integrates on-board Artificial Intelligence (AI) to analyze data in real-time. The AI can autonomously decide to increase resolution over complex areas or reduce data volume over uniform areas, optimizing the power and memory of the system. Demonstration flights of the CASALS were first conducted in November 2024. CASALS collects high-resolution 3D topography, vegetation vertical structure, hyperspectral imaging, and atmospheric profiles. The multi-modal CASALS data enable a wide range of science and applications in the areas of solid Earth, vegetation structure, cryosphere, hydrology, and coastal processes.

References:
https://techport.nasa.gov/projects/96409
https://doi.org/10.1109/IGARSS53475.2024.10642000

Please let me know if you have any questions or need additional information.

Thanks,
Yaxing

[GCMD - tstevens]

Thank you for the keyword request. We will review it and let you know when it is complete.