LIDAR reading of the World Trade Center site. "The use of lasers has become commonplace, from laser printers to laser surgery. In airborne-laser-mapping lidar, lasers are taken into the sky. Instruments are mounted on a single- or twin-engine plane or a helicopter. Airborne lidar technology uses four major pieces of equipment (see figure below). These are a laser emitter-receiver scanning unit attached to the aircraft; global positioning system (GPS) units on the aircraft and on the ground; an inertial measurement unit (IMU) attached to the scanner, which measures roll, pitch, and yaw of the aircraft; and a computer to control the system and store data. Several types of airborne lidar systems have been developed; commercial systems commonly used in forestry are discrete-return, small-footprint systems. “Small footprint” means that the laser beam diameter at ground level is typically in the range of 6 inches to 3 feet. The laser scanner on the aircraft sends up to 100,000 pulses of light per second to the ground and measures how long it takes each pulse to reflect back to the unit."
(http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories/s798.htm)
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