Current Status Of The Iss-Vegetation Lidar Mission-Moli

Canopy height is a factor to evaluate the above-ground biomass of a forest area by remote sensing techniques. Measurements of canopy height from space progress to understand the carbon budget. JAXA has studied a space-borne vegetation lidar (the Multi-footprint Observation Lidar and Imager : MOLI) that observes canopy height on the new exposed facility of the Japanese Experiment Module (JEM), the IVA-replaceable Small Exposed Experiment Platform (i-SEEP) on the International Space Station (ISS). The MOLI will be the first space lidar for earth environmental observation in Japan; a high-energy pulsed laser with a long operational life is key to the operation of the MOLI mission. The concepts underlying the MOLI and vacuum test of functional model of pulsed laser transmitter will be discussed herein.