APOLLO Documentation

APOLLO Project Documents

  1. Layout of Components at APO, Schematic of equipment positions relative to telescope (1 page)
  2. APO Preliminary Design Review (PDR), Murphy et al., March 10, 2003: Mechanical, thermal, electrical issues associated with mounting the laser on the telescope (and auxilliary equipment nearby). (27 pages)
  3. APO Critical Design Review (CDR), Murphy et al., May 2003: Mechanical, thermal, and plumbing details treated in the CDR at a more detailed level than what appeared in the PDR document. (25 pages)
  4. APOLLO System Manual, August 2005: Systems manual describing APOLLO components (laser, clock, timing system, ACM, etc.). (53 pages)
  5. ACM Command Reference, November 2010: Description, inputs, outputs, NAF commands. (6 pages)
  6. Housctl Manual, updated periodically; Eric Michelsen's manual describing the operation and design of the main data acquisition and environmental software package that runs on houston. (58 pages as of 9/08/06)
  7. Apollo System Notes, updated periodically; Eric Michelsen's collection of notes on the APOLLO system (22 pages as of 9/08/06)
  8. Sequence of Events, Murphy, May 8, 2002: Sequence of APOLLO timing events (1 page)
  9. APOLLO Timing Scheme I, Murphy, February 5, 2002: Timing/Control Scheme for APOLLO (2 pages)
  10. APOLLO Timing Sheme II, Murphy, May (?) 2002: Fleshed-out timing scheme and original ACM design (4 pages)
  11. APOLLO CPU Tasks, Murphy, 2002: What we ask of houston: control computer demands (1 page)
  12. Role and Performance of Diffuser, Laura Tom, Sept., 2004: Analysis of the diffuser properties and its impact on the APOLLO fiducial measurement (17 pages)
  13. Apache Point Observatory 3.5 m coordinates, August, 2005: Our best knowledge of where the telescope sits. (2 pages)
  14. APOLLO focal plane orientations, August, 2005: Mathematical development of APOLLO field rotations. Relative orientations of CCD, APD, periscope views, and the sky. (6 pages)
  15. Lunar Gate Positioning, August, 2005: Detailed prescription for how to place the lunar gate precisely where we want it, and how to predict the resulting TDC value on a gate-by-gate basis. (3 pages)
  16. Lunar Prediction Procedure, August 2005: A description of the iterative procedure used to perform the lunar prediction calculations. (4 pages)
  17. Perturbations to the Lunar Orbit, January 2006: Analysis of perturbation influences on the lunar orbit, including the solar tidal perturbation, gravitomagnetism, and general solar-directed perturbations as case examples. (5 pages)
  18. APOLLO: Meeting the Millimeter Goal, Murphy et al., Jan., 2005: paper for the 14th International Workshop on Laser Ranging describing the avalanche walk, diffuser solution, and thermal challenges to the differential scheme. (10 pages)
  19. Early Definition of APOLLO, Murphy, June 29, 2000: Initial calculations relating to APOLLO (24 pages)
  20. Statistics of Photon Arrival Time, Murphy, 2001: discusses first-photon bias
  21. Velocity Aberration of Lunar Return, Murphy, 2001: discusses point-ahead problem and pattern for APO
  22. Tidal Effects on Earth's Surface, Murphy, 2001: flounders over subject of tidal displacement at earth's surface
  23. Data Reduction Outline, April 18, 2006: Initial outline of the tasks to be accomplished by APOLLO reduction

Other APOLLO Members' Documentation Links

James Battat's Document Page: Observing Manual; RTDs; flowmeters; Marx Bank; loads more (over 30 documents).

Eric Michelsen's Home Page: APOLLO System Notes; Housctl Manual; Laser Communications; Coding Guidelines.

Adam Orin's Documents: Environmental monitoring; APOLLO timing; Power supplies and pinouts; diffuser logic; APD operation and crosstalk; Video streaming

APOLLO Electronics Schematics

APOLLO Components List

Introduction to Lunar Laser Ranging

  1. How High the Moon, Derral Mulholland, Sky & Telescope article, popular level (6 pages)
  2. The Lunar Laser Ranging Experiment, Bender et al., Science, 1973: Old-school paper on the first lunar ranging station: good because it describes a lot of the basics of the measurement, and the devices on the moon, etc. (10 pages)
  3. Lunar Laser Ranging: A Continuing Legacy of the Apollo Program, Dickey et al., Science, 1994: More recent description of lunar ranging: how it works and what science is derived from it. (9 pages)
  4. Testing Relativity: 20 Years of Progress, Clifford Will, Sky & Telescope, Oct. 1983: Overview of modern tests of GR at popular level. (6 pages)
  5. Millimetric Lunar Laser Ranging at OCA, Samain et al., Astronomy & Astrophysics Supplement Series, June 1998: A description of the French LLR system including a thorough discussion of systematic errors. (10 pages)

Lunar Ranging Science

  1. General Relativity at 75: How Right was Einstein>, Clifford Will, Science, November 1990: Moderately rigorous account of the various modern tests of GR and resulting constraints. (7 pages)
  2. Relativity Parameters Determined from Lunar Laser Ranging, Jim Williams et al., Physics Review D, June 1996: The best reference describing the LLR tests of GR, and the model that is used to extract this information out of the range series. (10 pages)
  3. Long-range Tests of the Equivalence Principle, Anderson and Williams, Classical and Quantum Gravity, 2001: Most recent published results on the LLR EP test. (10 pages)
  4. Lunar Laser Ranging and the Equivalence Principle Signal, Muller and Nordtvedt, Physical Review D, 1998: Independent (non-JPL) model for LLR reaching similar levels of precision. Lots of checks for potential aliases and biases. (13 pages)
  5. Testing the Equivalence Principle: Why and How?,Thibault Damour, Classical and Quantum Gravity, 1996: Theoretical motivations for pushing on equivalence principle tests. More general than LLR itself. (9 pages)
  6. Equivalence Principle and the Moon, Damour & Vokrouhlicky, Physical Review D, 1996: Specific motivations for using LLR to test the EP. Lots of lunar theory and also theoretical significance. (25 pages)

Laser Ranging Reflector Papers

  1. Arthur D. Little Final Report on Apollo 11 reflector design and testing
  2. Apollo 11 Reflector post-mission report by C. O. Alley et al.
  3. Apollo 14 Reflector post-mission report by J. E. Faller et al.
  4. Apollo 15 Reflector post-mission report by J. E. Faller et al.

APD papers

  1. Geiger-Mode Avalanche Diodes for Three-Dimensional Imaging, Aull et al., Lincoln Laboratories Journal, 2002: Great article about the APD array devices used in APOLLO. (16 pages)
  2. Photon counting techniques with silicon avalanche diodes, Dautet at al., Applied Optics, July 1993: Good overview of what various types of silicon APDs are capable of in terms of sensitivity and timing performance. (7 pages)
  3. Avalanche photodiodes and quenching circuits for single-photon detection, Cova et al., Applied Optics, April 1996: Great overview of quencing techniques and performance and electrical model of APDs. (21 pages)
  4. Performance optimization of active quenching circuits for picosecond timing with single-photon avalanche diodes, Lacaita et al., Review of Scientific Instrum., August 1995: Paper describing differential scheme for reporting APD avalanche with few-picosecond precision. This is the scheme we use for APOLLO. (7 pages)
  5. Three-Dimensional Imaging Laser Radars with Geiger-Mode Avalanche Photodiode Arrays, Marino et al., Lincoln Laboratories Journal, 2002: Applications of the APD arrays. (20 pages)
  6. 20-ps timing resolution with single-photon avalanche diodes, Cova et al., Review of Scientific Instrum., June 1989: Fast timing with APDs, describing, for instance, the pulse shape from APDs. (7 pages)

Atmosphere papers

  1. Correction of Laser Range Tracking Data for Atmospheric Refraction at Elevations above 10 degrees, Marini & Murray, NASA document: X-591-73-351, November 1973: Original tropospheric delay model still used today. (36 pages)
  2. Atmospheric Refractivity Corrections in Satellite Laser Ranging, Abshire & Gardner, IEEE Trans. on Geoscience and Remote Sensing, July 1985: Examination of the influence of gradients. (12 pages)
  3. Correction of Satellite Tracking Data for an Arbitrary Tropospheric Profile, Marini, Radio Science, February 1972: Early model for radio delay. (9 pages)
  4. Contributions to the Theory of Atmospheric Refraction, Part I, Saastamoinen, Bulletin Geodesique, September 1972: Basic Theory. (12 pages)
  5. Introduction to Practical Computation of Astronomical Refraction, Saastamoinen, Bulletin Geodesique, December 1972: Addresses non-equilibrium conditions. (8 pages)
  6. Contributions to the Theory of Atmospheric Refraction, Part II, Saastamoinen, Bulletin Geodesique, March 1973: Application to Satellite Ranging. (12 pages)

APOLLO main page.