Flight Hardware

Optech is strategically partnered with world leading space robotics developer MDA Space Missions to offer advanced space lidar systems for planetary exploration and orbital operations. Applications include spacecraft rendezvous, inspection, docking and servicing missions (e.g. AFRL XSS-11 lidar sensor); planetary science (e.g. NASA Mars Phoenix lidar sensor) and mapping, and autonomous hazard avoidance and precision landing systems.

Current Missions

U.S. Air Force XSS-11

Flight Hardware: Rendezvous Lidar Sensor (RLS)

Optech's RLS design was tailored to meet specific mission requirements in support of a one year spacecraft autonomous rendezvous technology demonstration mission (XSS-11). The design is based on a terrestrial scanning lidar design adapted to meet similar performance requirements in a LEO/MEO space environment. Launched aboard a Minotaur rocket in April 2005, the RLS system is operating flawlessly and continues to provide engineers with valuable data. Optech time-of-flight technology is a core element of the sensor design and mission purpose.

The RLS platform is an integrated system that allows centralized data, power and thermal management, while minimizing mass, power and volume.

Primary functions include seek and track missions, providing range, bearing and rates data; short range imaging and docking missions; and pose and close range data.

NASA Phoenix Mars lander 2007

In 2003, NASA selected phoenix as the first mission of the Mars Scout program. Scheduled for launch in 2007, Phoenix will land in the northern Vastitas Borealis region to assess the astrobiological potential at high latitudes and verify the evidence of subsurface water ice detected by the gamma ray spectrometer aboard the Mars Odyssey orbiter. Phoenix will also investigate the mineralogy and geochemistry of the soil and study the atmosphere. Canada's contribution to Phoenix will be the Meteorological (MET) package, consisting of an Optech lidar to measure the location and extent of clouds and the distribution of scatterers in the atmosphere as well as sensors for measuring pressure and temperature. MET will provide Canadian scientists with a unique opportunity to study the Martian atmosphere and enhance our understanding of the planet in key areas of Canadian expertise.