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The 2007 National Research Council (NRC) Decadal Survey on Earth Science and Applications from Space recommended Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights, Days, and Seasons (ASCENDS) as a midterm, Tier II, NASA space mission. ITT Exelis, formerly ITT Corp., and NASA Langley Research Center have been working together since 2004 to develop and demonstrate a prototype laser absorption spectrometer for making high-precision, column CO2 mixing ratio measurements needed for the ASCENDS mission. This instrument, called the multifunctional fiber laser lidar (MFLL), operates in an intensity-modulated, continuous wave mode in the 1.57 mu m CO2 absorption band. Flight experiments have been conducted with the MFLL on a Lear-25, UC-12, and DC-8 aircraft over a variety of different surfaces and under a wide range of atmospheric conditions. Very high-precision CO2 column measurements resulting from high signal-to-noise ratio (>1300) column optical depth (OD) measurements for a 10 s (similar to 1 km) averaging interval have been achieved. In situ measurements of atmospheric CO2 profiles were used to derive the expected CO2 column values, and when compared to the MFLL measurements over desert and vegetated surfaces, the MFLL measurements were found to agree with the in situ-derived CO2 columns to within an average of 0.17% or similar to 0.65 ppmv with a standard deviation of 0.44% or similar to 1.7 ppmv. Initial results demonstrating ranging capability using a swept modulation technique are also presented. (C) 2013 Optical Society of America