F-region (thermospheric) Dayside Neutral Wind Measurement from a CubeSat

Submitted at the invitation of the contracting office, this proposal details the Phase II Base and Phase II Options planning and costs for the development of the Interferometer for Neutral-Thermosphere Dynamics Imaging (INDI). The recently completed Phase I effort resulted in the design of a cubesat compatible sensor for measuring altitude profiles of the neutral wind speed and direction by measuring the Doppler shift of the 630 nm oxygen airglow emission that meets or exceeds the requirements specified in the SBIR call for proposals. Completion of the Base Phase will result in the fabrication of the INDI prototype as detailed in the Phase I report. The prototype consists of a flight-ready optical module (interferometer, with entrance optics, exit optics and baffle), detector and calibration lamp. Two Phase II options are proposed that, if selected, will evolve the prototype interferometer sensor into a self-contained flight-ready payload by providing flight electronics to interface the optical prototype to a cubesat bus (Option 1) and environmentally test it to demonstrate it will survive on orbit and provide the required science (Option 2). The result of these efforts will be a flight-ready sensor ready to be integrated into a 6U cubesat.