2-BEAM LASER ILLUMINATION FOR SHAPE CLASSIFICATION - FEASIBILITY STUDY

Techniques to generate iluminations for objects with no intrinsic sign ature are investigated. We propose two-laser beam illumination resulti ng in a straight-line interference pattern generated across a flat sur face. The actual degree of fringe-deformation indicates the shape of t he object, in particular, the amount of curvature across the object. T his illumination method is applicable to an object such as a comet nuc leus and an asteroid: it is cold, generates no light, and is too small or too far away from the Sun to receive an adequate amount of illumin ation from it. For the most effective utilization of laser power, the optimum separation of the illuminating apertures equals four aperture diameters.