Christian WERNER,¹ Grigorii KOKHANENKO,² Gennadii MATVIENKO,² Vitalii SHAMANAEV,² Yurii GRACHJOV,² Igor ZNAMENSKII² and Ulrich G. OPPEL³

¹German Aerospace Research Establishment (DLR), Institute of Optoelectronics, P.O. Box 1116, D-82230 We�E�ling, Germany, ²Institute of Atmospheric Optics, Tomsk, Russia, 1, Akademicheskii Av., Tomsk 634055, Russia, ³Institute of Mathematics, Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, Theresienstr. 39, 80333 Munich, Germany

(Received September 17, 1994; Accepted May 9, 1995)

First, in this report an overview is given on the use of the Russian laser altimeter in space gLORAh as a lidar for cloud measurements. Secondly, the influence of multiple scattering is verified by analysis of the backscatter signals from clouds having the excellent range resolution of a rangefinder.

Key words : spaceborne laser ranging, laser rangefinder, cloud lidar, multiple scattering