RMI Proposal for 2021 Topic S2.03: Near-Infrared LiDAR Spherical Beam Expander Telescope

RMI proposes to innovate on previous intermediate aperture off-axis designs used by NASA for flight LiDAR applications by utilizing anbsp;Maksutov-Cassegrain inspired beam expander in line with the 20x150mm requirement requested for Phase 1 but focused on it#39;s applicability, scalability, and manufacturability for the Phase II objective of a potential space based 0.5 m system with similar parameters. RMI will be leveraging it#39;s current work on a system with similar requirements used by NASA that utilizes off-axis aspherical optics. These optics must be produced freeform by CNC systems (diamond turning) and are very labor intensive and aperture restricted in practice. By switching to a spherical design the cost, manufacturability, and physical scale of a system becomes far less restricted. Aberrations are controlled by selective use of refractive surfaces in combination with reflective ones to achieve a low dispersion (but correctible), athermalized, flight hardened, high-power ready optical system with looser alignment tolerances and more precisely manufacturable components.nbsp;