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Disclaimer: This material is being kept online for historical purposes.
LITE

... a view from space

Lidar In-space Technology Experiment

LITE was a three-wavelength backscatter lidar developed by NASA Langley Research Center to fly on the Space Shuttle to support advancement of knowledge of Earth as a system to meet the chanllenges of environmental changes, and to improve life on our planet. .

. LITE flew on Discovery in September 1994 as part of the STS-64 mission.

... the goals of the mission

  • validate key lidar technologies for spaceborne applications
  • explore the applications of space lidar
  • gain operational experience to benefit the development of future systems on free-flying satellite platforms.

... the final results

LITE was operated for 53 hours, resulting in over 40 GBytes of data covering 1.4 million kilometers of ground track.

These data provide the FIRST highly detailed global view of the vertical structure of cloud and aerosol from the Earth's surface through the middle stratosphere.

LITE provided views of multilayer cloud structures. .

. LITE provided sensitive observations of the distribution of desert dust, smoke, and other aerosols.

LITE provided the first global observations of planetary boundary layer height. .

... and there is so much more

Topics may be selected from the LITE Home Page Directory displayed on the upper left side of each page or from the table below.

Select LITE Topics From Here
Mission Overview Provides an overview of the LITE mission.
Data User's Guide Describes how to use the LITE data.
Data FAQ's Frequently Asked Questions about LITE data.
Science Steering Group Read about the members of the LITE Science Steering Group and link to their special topics websites.
Instrument Read about the LITE instrument.
Publications Lists publications about the LITE mission and results of analysis.
Images View data images from all three lidar wavelengths.
Photographs View photographs from the LITE camera.
Photographs and Images View LITE lidar images with the corresponding photographs from the LITE camera.
Data Gallery Investigate tutorials describing selected observations of LITE.
Meta Database Access LITE Meta Database - Concise descriptions of LITE level 0 data at 10 second intervals.
Instrument Status Data Block (ISDB) Dataset Access LITE ISDB data.



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Last Update: November 7, 2016