ATLID, ESA atmospheric LIDAR: integration of instrument and tests

The ATmospheric LIDar (Light Detection and Ranging), ATLID, is part of the payload of the Earth Cloud and Aerosol Explorer (EarthCARE) mission, the sixth Earth Explorer Mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) Living Planet Program. After the successful major step of optical and electrical integration, ATLID has started its performance and functional testing in Toulouse Airbus Defence and Space. The emission part of the instrument has been operated with both TxA (Laser transmitter units) delivered from Leonardo team: as major achievement the main performance of both flight lasers have been tested and confirmed with more than 40mJ UV emission @51Hz with operation via instrument control ACDM flight unit (ATLID control and data management). Tests are parallelized with on one side the EFM test (Electrical Flight Model), and on the other side the OFM tests (Optical flight model). The EFM tests aim at validating the functional and electrical architecture via functional testing on each nominal and redundant path with all the flight electronic units and laser sources. The OFM tests aims validating the receiver alignment from telescope input till fiber detectors, the field of view of the three detection channels and their radiometric performance. OFM vibration tests have been performed and have validated design stability against mechanical loads. End of OFM and EFM tests is planned at summer 2018 and will give go ahead for instrument assembly in its final ATLID PFM configuration with laser cooling system integration. After Ambient performance testing, the environmental test campaign immediately start with EMC, mechanical and thermal vacuum testing.