Lunar Lidar Technology for Artemis Human Habitation

Fibertek proposes the development of a low size, weight, and power in situ Lunar Lidar in support of NASArsquo;s Artemis missions. The lidar will be engineered for the harsh lunar environment and thereby have additional utility to NASA for general planetary exploration. The lidar is vehicle or astronaut mounted; provides high-resolution point-cloud data for developing centimeter-scale terrain maps via simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) processing; and supports real-time, non-GPS navigation, obstacle detection, and hazard avoidance. Phase I testing established feasibility for Phase II by reducing major environmental risks including low temperature survival, operation in a vacuum, and radiation survivability with low Single Event Function Interrupt (SEFI) rates. The lidar operated after thermal vacuum cycles down to -150deg;C and core lidar electronics (lasers, detectors, and custom application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC)) exhibited no destructive radiation effects or performance degradation. Phase II will engineer updates to the housing and power supply electronics, as well as perform random vibration and radiation testing.