A Space-Based Wind Lidar for the International Space Station

The ATHENA-OAWL proposal was submitted to the NASA Earth Venture Instrument Announcement of Opportunity in 2013 for implementation on the ISS and was re-submitted in 2016. The mission is to utilize the Optical Autocovariance Wind Lidar (OAWL) technique to profile winds to support studies of atmospheric transport, hurricanes, and the impact of wind measurements on numerical weather prediction.  After it was not selected for the spaceflight mission in 2013, NASA funded additional development through its Venture Technology program. This presentation will review the lidar design, its heritage in the CALIOP lidar on the CALIPSO satellite, and provide the status on progress towards advancing its critical technologies in order to reduce the mission risk.