Research Topic
Space Testing And payload sensoR
Research Topic
Optics and Sensors for Scientific Payload
Sensors for Scientific Payload
Reconfigurable optical metasurfaces are rapidly emerging as a major frontier in photonics research, development, and applications. They promise compact, lightweight, and energy-efficient reconfigurable optical systems with unprecedented performance and functions that can be dynamically defined on-demandAmong the potential candidates for reconfigurable optics, chalcogenide-based phase change materials (PCMs) offer great promise due to their non-volatile and analogue switching characteristics. The ability to dynamically tune optical functions through selective modulation of electromagnetic waves is crucial to the advancement of a variety of sensing applications, from imaging spectrometers to light detection and ranging (lidar).
Deployable Telescope for Space
Deployable optics would be directly applicable to the majority of space agencies’ (including NASA) current and future fleet of instruments (lidar, imager, spectrometer, etc.) over most wavelengths (X-ray to millimeter) and cover spaceborne Earth science, heliophysics, planetary science, and astrophysics measurements. When an instrument’s primary optic becomes deployable, the associated reduction in form factor allows instruments to evolve into a fuller potential and step into smaller architectures, enabling either significant cost reductions, or the ability to increase the overall throughput of the system, due to a larger effective primary optic, and achieve a greater signal to noise ratio.
For this research, we are developing diffractive optics for maximized throughput tailored to lidar applications and imaging as space telescope in SmallSat.