article_snippet: Houston and the National Center for Airborne Laser Mapping (NCALM) flew .
article_snippet: over the Mosquitia region in a small plane shooting billions of laser .
article_snippet: Over the course of a week, the NCALM and University of Houston engineers flew over 60 square miles of forest in the NCALM and University of Houston engineers dual-engine Cessna planes.
article_snippet: Flying above the intended target area, LiDAR operates by sending out 100,000 short laser pulses to the ground each second.
article_snippet: The University of Houston blanketed the Mosquitia rainforest with as many as 25-50 laser pulses every square metre that totaled up as more than four billion shots during the entire project.