Reflective tomography for space object imaging using a short-pulselength laser

The Air Force Phillips Laboratory is upgrading the surveillance capabilities of its AMOS facility with a coherent laser radar system. A notable feature of this laser radar system is its short (approximately equals 1 ns) pulselength which allows high resolution range data to be obtained. The usefulness of this range data for use in reflective tomographic reconstructions of images of space objects is discussed in this paper. A brief review of tomography is given. Then the capability of the laser radar system to provide adequate range-resolved data is analyzed, both in terms of system parameters and signal-to-noise issues. Sample image reconstructions are presented and discussed.