Analysis on the Isostatic Bipod Mounts for the HERA Mission LIDAR

Abstract

The Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) is a time-of-flight altimeter instrument being developed for the HERA mission, designated as Planetary ALTimeter (PALT). PALT is positioned in the center of the top face of the HERA probe, and therefore, it cannot use radiators to stabilize its internal temperature. The contribution of this paper is the design of isostatic bipod mounts for the LIDAR primary mirror. The performance of PALT must be maintained over a wide operational range, from −60 °C to 80 °C. These temperature requirements imply that a careful isostatic mount structure design is critical to maintaining performance in all operational scenarios. The purpose of the instrument is to perform range measurements from 500 m to 14 km. The instrument will contribute to the detailed characterization of the asteroid’s topography, assist the probe navigation in operations such as fly-bys (including on the dark side of the asteroid) or landing. PALT has an emitter system that generates 2 ns, 100 µJ, 1535 nm laser pulses and a receiver system that collects the backscattered signal from the asteroid. The receiver system is composed of a 70 mm diameter Cassegrain telescope and a refractive system that focuses the signal on the sensor.