High Throughput Spectrometer to Detect Elemental Metals in Rocket Effluent

This project develops a high resolution, high throughput spectrometer that can detect trace metallic elements in effluent of rocket propelled craft. This system is optimized to reject the background from both the Rayleigh scattered solar radiation and the blackbody emission from the rocket engine. Dual liquid crystal Fabry-Perot etalons form the basis of this spectrometer. The high throughput of etalons is exploited to produce a spectrometer that has a resolution greater than that of a grating system, yet it is smaller and lighter. In the first phase of the project a ground-based, small field instrument is built and designs are established for an airborne, wide field system to be built in phase II.