A team at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has developed an instrument intended to remove blind spots between the lines of lidar data that space-based sensors collect from Earth's surface. NASA announced the work on Oct. 21, 2026. The Concurrent Artificially-intelligent Spectrometry Lidar System, or CASALS, was built with support from NASA's Earth Science Technology Office.

Rather than steering a laser with moving mirrors, CASALS steers light by wavelength. A fast-pulsing, tunable seed laser centered at 1040 nanometers cycles through 256 unique wavelengths, and a transmission grating diffracts each pulse into a distinct position across the flight path, painting a continuous 3D swath. The approach removes moving parts, reducing size, weight and power needs. Its detector array operates at 80% quantum efficiency, allowing weaker return signals to be detected from darker surfaces or through denser vegetation, according to principal investigator John Yorks.

An airborne prototype flew aboard NASA's B200 King Air in November 2024 and produced science-quality datasets on its first campaign, at roughly five kilometers altitude with 22-centimeter horizontal resolution. The team aims to fly CASALS again in the ASCENT campaign, scheduled for summer 2027, and plans to widen the swath and add onboard data processing before building a space-ready prototype.