Design of a Four-Element, Hollow-Cube Corner Retroreflector for Satellites by use of a Genetic Algorithm.

A four-element retroreflector was designed for satellite laser ranging and Earth-satellite-Earth laser long-path absorption measurement of the atmosphere. The retroreflector consists of four symmetrically located corner retroreflectors. Each retroreflector element has curved mirrors and tuned dihedral angles to correct velocity aberrations. A genetic algorithm was employed to optimize dihedral angles of each element and the directions of the four elements. The optimized four-element retroreflector has high reflectance with a reasonably broad angular coverage. It is also shown that the genetic algorithm is effective for optimizing optics with many parameters.