Title: Lunar laser ranging in infrfared at hte Grasse laser station,
Abstract: For many years, lunar laser ranging (LLR) observations using a green
wavelength have suffered an inhomogeneity problem both temporally and
spatially. This paper reports on the implementation of a new infrared detection
at the Grasse LLR station and describes how infrared telemetry improves this
situation. Our first results show that infrared detection permits us to densify
the observations and allows measurements during the new and the full Moon
periods. The link budget improvement leads to homogeneous telemetric
measurements on each lunar retro-reflector. Finally, a surprising result is
obtained on the Lunokhod 2 array which attains the same efficiency as Lunokhod
1 with an infrared laser link, although those two targets exhibit a
differential efficiency of six with a green laser link.