From Event: SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications, 2018
As part of the geolocation accuracy assessment of lightning flashes detected by the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) on the GOES-16 and GOES-17 satellites (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite), two satellite laser ranging stations employed laser beacon systems to generate transient light pulses that simulate natural lightning around 777.4 nm to validate the pre-launch spec of 5 km. The pulse width, repetition rate, wavelength, and power of the laser-pulses were configured to produce sufficient instrument response to be detected as synthetic lightning events by the GLM instrument. During the testing period from April 2017 to January 2018, the laser systems illuminated the GOES-16 satellite to observe diurnal variation of the GLM system response, with particular emphasis on geolocation accuracy. The final GOES-16 laser beacon tests, which used the latest updates of the geolocation algorithms implemented by the GOES-R Ground Segment, showed the offsets between the GLM geolocated location and the known laser locations were within 5 km.
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Dennis Buechler, Thomas Varghese, Peter Armstrong, James Bremer, Rivers Lamb, Jon Fulbright, and Steve Goodman, "On-orbit validation of the geolocation accuracy of GOES-16 Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) flashes using ground-based laser beacons," Proc. SPIE 10764, Earth Observing Systems XXIII, 107640J (Presented at SPIE Optical Engineering + Applications: August 21, 2018; Published: 7 September 2018); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2321672.