Instead of installing a lidar on the ground, where he took the reflected light will be noisier due to scattering in the polluted lower atmosphere, "atmospheric" lidar can be raised into the air or in orbit, which significantly improves the signal-to-noise ratio and the effective radius of the system. The first full orbital lidar was placed in orbit by NASA in December 1994 as part of the program LITE (Lidar In-Space Technology Experiment). Two-ton LITE lidar with a meter mirror telescope that has been raised to a height of 260 km, "painted" on the ground blur diameter of 300 m, which was obviously not enough for efficient mapping of relief, and was very "atmospheric".
Particularly valuable was the experience of verification data of satellite imagery using synchronous data for more than 60 ground-based lidar worldwide.
The first European orbital lidar (project ALADIN) is planned for launch in 2008.
Space geodesy. Current space projects were divided into two areas - improving the "air" systems (see the above draft Alcatel) and geodetic lidars that can scan the Earth's surface topography with an acceptable resolution. Lidars can be used both on the Earth's orbit and the orbits of other planets, a practical example of this - airborne lidar spacecraft Mars Global Surveyor.
Aviation geodesy. National Oceanographic Service of the U.S. (NOAA) has been systematically pursuing aircraft lidar for surveying the sea coast. Scanning Lidar NOAA has a vertical resolution of 15 cm and the scanning band (at nominal altitude) of 300 m. The binding to altitude is "from sea level (adjusted for tides) to geographic coordinates - the signals of GPS. U.S. Geographical Service (USGS) conducts similar surveying in Antarctica, USGS survey data are publicly available. In 2007 the USGS began a program for embedding data in the national LIDAR topographic data base of the United States.
Particular direction, applied in practice in earthquake-prone areas of the U.S. - a differential height measurement to detect local movements of earth masses in the area of faults. Back in 1996 using lidar was discovered previously unknown fault zone near Seattle.