NASA detailed a compact lidar instrument on October 21 that is designed to collect continuous three-dimensional swaths of forests and terrain. The Concurrent Artificially-intelligent Spectrometry Lidar System, or CASALS, was developed by a team at Goddard Space Flight Center to address gaps left between the narrow tracks measured by existing space-based laser instruments.

CASALS directs light without motorized steering mirrors. A tunable laser centered at 1,040 nanometers cycles through 256 wavelengths, and a patterned optical grating sends each pulse toward a different position across the flight path. NASA says removing moving steering parts can reduce the instrument’s size, weight and power requirements.

An airborne prototype flew on a NASA B200 aircraft in November 2024. From an altitude of roughly five kilometers, it produced science-quality data with 22-centimeter horizontal resolution. NASA also reports an 80% quantum efficiency for its detector array, a measure of how effectively returning photons are converted into a signal.

The agency plans another airborne campaign in summer 2027 while the team works to widen the observed swath and add onboard processing. CASALS is not yet an operational satellite instrument. Turning a successful aircraft prototype into space-qualified hardware will require further development and testing.