The Green-OAWL (GrOAWL) Airborne Demonstrator For The ATHENA-OAWL Mission Concept: System Progress And Flight Plans

The Green-Optical Autocovariance Wind Lidar (GrOAWL) system is currently being built at Ball Aerospace to fly as an airborne demonstrator for a future two-look, space-based, Doppler Wind Lidar mission like that outlined in the ATHENA-OAWL Earth Venture Instrument mission concept. GrOAWL will operate at the 532 nm wavelength and demonstrate measurement of simultaneous line-of-sight (LOS) wind retrievals from two azimuthally orthogonal directions to provide u and v component information for horizontal winds in clear air. We will present on the GrOAWL airborne demonstrator system design, plans for airborne flight testing and validation efforts to take place in April/May of 2016, and planned approach to validating the system performance and scaling it to that of a future space-based mission.