SPATIAL/IR SPECTRAL SENSOR FOR MICROGRAVITY COMBUSTION EXPERIMENTS

THE PROPOSED RESEARCH ADDRESSES THE DESIGN AND DEVELOPMENT OF AN INSTRUMENT FOR THE NON-PERTURBING MEASUREMENT OF SOURCE GASES, COMBUSTION PRODUCTS AND HEAT FLOW IN COMBUSTION EXPERIMENTS IN A MICROGRAVITY ENVIRONMENT. THE PROPOSED INNOVATION IS AN IMAGING SPECTROMETER USING ALL REFLECTIVE OPTICS, PROBLEM SPECIFIC DISPERSIVE ELEMENTS AND COMMERCIALLY AVAILABLE FOCAL PLANE ARRAYS. THE IMAGING SPECTROMETER PROVIDES SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL INFORMATION IN THE FORM OF IR IMAGERY WITH EACH SPATIAL PIXEL HAVING A COMPLETE SPECTRUM WITH GOOD SPECTRAL RESOLUTION. THE USE OFALL REFLECTIVE OPTICS ALLOWS THE SPECTROMETER SECTION OF THEINSTRUMENT TO BE TAILORED TO VARIOUS SPECTRAL BANDS BY PROPER CHOICE OF THE FPA AND THE DISPERSER. MULTIPLE BANDS MAY BE COVERED BY USING MULTIPLE SPECTROMETERS FED BY DICHROIC BEAM SPLITTERS. THE SPATIAL, TEMPORAL AND SPECTRALDATA CAN BE PRESENTED IN SEVERAL DIFFERENT WAYS TO SUIT EXPERIMENTAL OBJECTIVES. A PRELIMINARY DESIGN OF A GROUND BASED SENSOR WILL BE DEVELOPED DURING THE PROGRAM. THE GROUND BASED SENSOR DESIGN WILL HAVE CAPABILITY OF BEING UPGRADED TO AIRBORNE AND SPACEBORNE SERVICE. FUTURE DEVELOPMENT WILL PROVIDE LOW COST IMAGING SPECTROMETERS THROUGH THE USE OF LOW COST REFLECTIVE OPTICS, COMMERCIAL FOCAL PLANE ARRAYS AND SIGNAL PROCESSING ELECTRONICS. A BREADBOARD DEMONSTRATION OF AN IMAGING SPECTROMETER IS PROPOSED.