May the Forests Be With You

Credit: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/LK Ward

NASA is playing up the Star Wars theme with the coming launch of GEDI, a lidar sensor package that will be mounted on the International Space Station this fall with the primary mission being the 3D mapping of the world’s forests. GEDI will be the first space-borne lidar with this mission.

From the press release:

The Global Ecosystem Dynamics Investigation – or GEDI, pronounced like “Jedi,” of Star Wars fame – instrument is undergoing final integration and testing this spring and summer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. The instrument is expected to launch aboard SpaceX’s 16th commercial resupply services mission, targeted for late 2018. GEDI is being led by the University of Maryland, College Park; the instrument is being built at NASA Goddard.

“Scientists have been planning for decades to get comprehensive information about the structure of forests from space to deepen our understanding of how this structure impacts carbon resources and biodiversity across large regions and even globally, as well as a host of other science issues,” said Ralph Dubayah, GEDI principal investigator and a professor of geographical sciences at the University of Maryland. “This is why seeing the instrument built and racing toward launch is so exciting.”

GEDI’s three lasers will produce eight ground tracks – two of the lasers will generate two ground tracks each, and the third will generate four. As the space station and GEDI orbit Earth, laser pulses will reflect off clouds, trees and the planet’s surface. While the instrument will gather height information about everything in its path, it is specifically designed to measure forests. The amount and intensity of the light that bounces back to GEDI’s telescope will reveal details about the height and density of trees and vegetation, and even the structure of leaves and branches within a forest’s canopy.

See the full press release.