Sensor for Naval Concept

Optical Physics Company (OPC) is proposing to develop manufacture and test the prototype of a novel optical sensor based upon the OPC interferometric star tracker (iST). OPC comes into this project with a TRL 5 demonstration of the iST completed under an Air Force sponsored Phase II contract. A $250K enhancement program is now building a new interferometer block with 3X better transmission and half the weight which can be used on the Navy application. During the 12-month Phase II base effort a prototype of the optical sensor will be assembled and tested first in the laboratory and then at the Air Force Maui Optical Site (AMOS). This will be followed by a three-month option period where the data taken at Maui is correlated with data taken from other systems to evaluate the additional utility of this new sensor compared to existing sensor assets. This will include a probabilistic performance model of the sensor applied to a candidate sensor configuration to evaluate utility when fully deployed.