Development of a Spaceborne Fiber-Based Laser MOPA Transmitter

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has been developing an integrated path differential absorption (IPDA)lidar instrument concept to measure the column concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO 2 )from space. We will discuss the development effort of a space-qualified, single frequency, fiber-based master oscillator power amplifier with >450 μJ pulse energy, 7.5 kHz repetition rate, single spatial mode, and > 20 dB polarization extinction.