Innovative technologies for very-high-resolution MWIR and LWIR Earth observations

Le résumé fourni par la source

High resolution thermal Infrared (TIR) observations from low earth orbit (LEO) require large aperture optics because for a given resolution the required optical aperture size scales linearly with wavelength. TIR observations at 10 microns therefore need an aperture which is 20 times bigger than what is needed for visible light at 0.5 microns. To make high resolution TIR imaging more affordable we are developing unfolding, self-aligning space telescopes and extreme telephoto wide-field telescopes. Our unfolding payloads have 4 times better resolution than a conventional payload of the same size and our payloads are well suited to applications which require high resolution constellations with many satellites to provide frequent revisit rates. We are also developing extreme telephoto, wide field telescopes which combine high resolution with large swath and high revisit rate. We are currently developing the unfolding technology for a 16U CubeSat with a resolution of 6m at LWIR (8–13 microns) with the aim of launching this as an in-orbit demonstrator in 2026. Our development program for a larger version of our unfolding technology for SmallSat platforms will give a resolution of 3m at LWIR and 1.5m at MWIR (3–5 microns) and our current projection for an in-orbit demonstration of this is 2028. Our LWIR ESA Incubed project (SPIRIT) will have a resolution of 9m with a swath of 33km and a constellation of 12 of these will be able to map the entire globe in 2 days. If all goes well, SPIRIT will have its in-orbit demonstration in 2027. In this paper, we will describe these telescope designs, give details on performance and describe our plans to operate them in LEO. We will also, discuss some of the use-cases we are developing including agriculture, climate-change mitigation and wild-fire prevention.

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