Latest: Work began in early October; progress to date has been encouraging but (due to resource constraints) not quite as fast as we'd like.
Building on my In Situ Coherent Lidar (ISICL) particle detection technology, this new and more advanced ISICL will be capable of detecting individual 0.18 μm metal particles moving at up to 3 km/s (Mach 9) anywhere in the vacuum chamber and mapping them in 8 dimensions [position (x, y, z), velocity (vx, vy, vz), time, and particle size]. The Doppler frequencies are as high as 7 GHz, which is pretty different from the original ISICL's 2 MHz, but somewhat surprisingly the basic design is the same; the only major changes are a somewhat more powerful laser, a longer working distance, and a much higher bandwidth back end.