6U CubeSat EO/IR Solutions for Operational Weather Demo

In this Phase I Air Force SBIR program, Phase Sensitive Innovations seeks deployment of a hyperspectral microwave photonic radiometer operating full band at V-Band (50-75 GHz) and/or G-Band (110-300 GHz) with 1 GHz spectral resolution on a 6U CubeSat bus in polar orbit for remote sensing applications. Our payload consumes about 2U, while 4U are available for avionics (e.g. attitude control, power, communications, etc.). We propose a standard cross-track scanning system that allows two-temperature calibration and a swath width of about 1000 km from LEO. The rotating mirror feeds the antenna on our payload, which encompasses a microwave photonic processor with optical dispersive element on the back-end to achieve hyperspectral operation across very large bandwidths, perhaps hundreds of contiguous channels spanning 20-240 GHz with 800 MHz resolution. Such improved spectral resolution and increased number of detection channels provides a much richer sky brightness temperature data set, resulting in greater altitude resolution and demonstrated better retrieval accuracy of key atmospheric parameters. Additionally, the approach provides benefits for RFI mitigation. The superior performance of our 6U CubeSat sensor solution translates into improved weather nowcasting and forecasting capability for USAF concepts of operations.