ABSTRACT
Hayabusa-1 ........................................................................66 3.4 Future Prospects ........................................................................................... 67
3.4.1 BELA on BepiColombo ...................................................................68 3.4.2 GALA on the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer .................................... 69 3.4.3 OSIRIS-REx ....................................................................................... 71
3.5 Concluding Remarks ...................................................................................72 Acknowledgments ................................................................................................72 References ............................................................................................................... 73
Laser altimetry is a powerful tool to address major objectives of planetary physics, geodesy, and geology (e.g., Jin et al. 2013). It can be used to determine the global shape and radius of planetary bodies, global, regional, and local topography of the surface, tidal deformation, rotational states and physical librations, surface roughness and local slopes, seasonal changes of elevations (e.g., polar caps on Mars), atmospheric properties (density by attenuation of the laser beam), and albedo at the laser wavelength. In addition, laser altimetry is used to define accurate reference systems of planetary bodies, which provide the basis for other measurements that have to be referenced to absolute coordinate systems. Furthermore, it can assist in spacecraft orbit and attitude determination. All these methods, except measurements of tidal deformation and physical librations, have been applied to solar system bodies other than Earth.
