Collimation System Design, And Lidar In Space Rendezvous And Docking

That, the successful launch and return of Shenzhou-VI spacecraft, marks our aerospace technology has entered the large-scale exploitation and utilization of outer space. In the near future, the technology is directly expected to serve for national economy. In order to develop the outer space experiments and its application researches, it is crucial to build a permanent space station, where rendezvous and docking technique plays an important role among it. Meanwhile, the rendezvous Lidar is the key element of rendezvous and docking. There must be a high-efficient and good-quality beam if Lidar works precisely and distinguishably. How to produce such a good beam is the aim of this paper. The main contents include:1) Choosing the proper laser for rendezvous Lidar;According to the characteristics of semiconductor laser with 0.85μm and solid state laser pumped by semiconductor with 1.06 μm, we choose SDL2300 laser diode as our design and experiment laser.2) Producing good quality beam;As Lidar needs good quality beam, it is necessary to study beam collimation and shaping technique especially for the elliptical facula of semiconductor lasers. At the same time, the elements of collimation should be miniature and practical for the outer space application. We design ray path for collimators with geometric theory, and optimize in optical software ZEMAX.3) Selecting right test method and using Photon 2350BeamProfiler to detect the collimation beam. After calculation the angle of divergence is a desired goal about 1.2-1.3mrad.4) Analyzing the experiment results and the imaginable error.