SBIR NASA CubeSat: Custom Optical Science Telescope Payloads-as-a-Service (COSTPaaS) Development

The 2017 decadal survey called out a need to reduce mission costs for space-based earth observation. To help meet this need, Quartus Engineering Incorporated (Quartus) is proposing leveraging analytical models and existing opto-mechanical designs to provide a shift in the approach to the development of Custom Optical Science Telescope Payloads-as-a-Service (COSTPaaS) for deployment on CubeSats and small satellite platforms. It is common for technology to be leveraged from mission to mission, such as customizable CubeSat, small sat, or larger satellite buses. This is less common with precision optical subsystems, which are often designed from the ground up to meet the science needs of a mission. If the appropriate work is done to validate the analytical tools used to design optical components and subsystem designs, beyond a particular use case, these tools could be used to adapt current component and subsystem designs to new missions.Quartus will perform correlation of analytical data to as-tested thermal data on a system-level basis, with the system being an afocal reflective telescope consisting of three optics.nbsp; The fine-tuned analytical approach will then be able to be translated to other optical systems, for trustworthy, validated thermal optical performance results, without the need for thermal testing.nbsp;In addition to the thermal testing of an afocal reflective system for correlation results, Quartus will also validate a flight-ready design of the afocal system for Stratospheric Aerosol and Gas Experiment IV (SAGE IV) for thermal performance. This system will be a deliverable at the conclusion of the SBIR Phase II effort, to be used either as a flight instrument or spare for a future SBIR Phase III SAGE IV flight mission.