GrOAWL: The ATHENA-OAWL Venture Technology Airborne Demonstrator Instrument

 The Green Optical Autocovariance Wind Lidar (GrOAWL) instrument was built to serve as an airborne demonstraor for the ATHENA-OAWL (Atmospheric Transport, Hurricanes and Extratropical Numerical weather prediction using the OAWL) mission concept for measurement of wind profiles from space.  The 532 nm wavelength, direct detection, aerosol Doppler wind lidar demonstrator system was configured for flight aboard the NASA WB-57 aircraft.  During flight tests out of NASA Johnson Space Center’s Ellington Field in May and June 2016, the system made simultaneous wind measurements along two orthogonal lines of sight (to capture u and v components of the wind field).  We provide an overview of the system architecture, present wind speed measurements from the flight tests, summarize the instrument validation results and discuss current plans for the airborne demonstrator instrument.