National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Small Business Innovation Research 2002 Program Solicitations

CHAPTER 9.2

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Topic 3: Earth Science and Physics and Astronomy
NASA Installation: Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC)

This STTR is divided into both passive and active remote sensing concepts and technologies to enable future both Earth Science and Physics and Astronomy measurements.

For Earth Science, this primarily will include soil moisture, ocean salinity, ocean mixing layer depth, carbon dioxide, atmospheric chemistry in both troposphere and stratosphere, aerosols, hydrological cycle, earthquakes, and other natural disasters such as volcanic eruptions, fires, and spreading of various vector diseases.

Physics and astronomy related goals seek to solve mysteries of the universe, explore the solar system, discover planets around other stars, search for life beyond Earth, chart the evolution of the universe and understand its galaxies, stars, planets, and life. NASA seeks to understand the universe from the beginning of time, looking ever deeper with increasingly more capable telescopes to scan the entire electromagnetic spectrum from gamma rays to radio wavelengths.

Microwave Measurements Using Large Aperture Systems
Breakthrough technologies are sought to support the construction of extremely large (tens of meters and larger diameter) microwave antenna systems. The systems must be compact upon launch, they must achieve high precision surface form factors, and they must include beam-scanning capabilities. The antenna compactness on launch can be achieved either through folding technologies or from some assemblage of small components into the larger final system in space. The microwave antenna surface characteristics must be accurate enough to produce microwave beam patterns with adequately small side lobes. The beam scanning must be facile and over many beam widths so as to enable cross-track scanning if in LEO, or scanning over the full globe if at GEO. The beam widths must be small enough to resolve the few kilometer scales needed for many geophysical observations. The microwave wavelengths will be determined according to the geophysical measurement of interest. Antenna concepts may include large single apertures or apertures composed of multiple elements that are operated synergistically so as to product the desired performance.

Active Optical Systems and Technology
Lidar remote sensing systems are required to meet the demanding requirements for future Earth Science missions. It is envisioned that lidar systems will be used in the following application areas: high spatial and temporal resolution observations of the land surface and vegetation cover (biomass); profiling of clouds, aerosols and atmospheric state variables including temperature, humidity, winds and trace constituents including tropospheric and stratospheric ozone and CO₂ (profiling and total column); measurement of the air/sea interface and mixed layer. New systems and approaches are sought in these areas which will either enable a new measurement capability, enhance an existing measurement capability by significantly improving the performance (spatial/temporal resolution, accuracy, range of regard), or substantially reduce the resources (cost, mass, volume or power) required to attain the same measurement capability.

Systems and approaches will be considered which demonstrate a capability that is scalable to space or can be mounted on a relevant platform (UAV, long duration balloon, or aircraft) for calibration/validation of a spaceborne system.

Passive Remote Sensing Detector Systems and Components
Innovative developments are being sought that incorporate new architectures, new technologies and advanced remote sensing techniques to make physics and astronomy measurements. Emphasis on low weight, small volume and low power is very important. The innovations sought include:

• Far infrared detector systems for operation at temperatures less than or approximately equal to 80 K
• 3D (2 spatial 1 energy) photon counting detectors for spectroscopic imaging in the visible & UV
• Energy resolving sensors that operate above 4K. These should have at least 4 energy bands and can operate anywhere between X-ray and Sub-mm
• High spatial resolution (0.1 arc second or better), light weight, ground testable optical systems for visible, UV, and EUV solar investigations
• Widely tunable(> 60 nm), single frequency, compact (< 1 cubic inch volume) semiconductor lasers
• High quantum efficiency (> 10%), photon counting, near infrared (1- 2 micron) detectors for use in laser systems
• Devices permitting the measurement of DC/AC electric and magnetic fields
• High speed, low power, low signal analog electronics for high energy detector systems
• Precision lightweight optics (precision defined as surface figure <0.01 waves rms @633nm, surface roughness <2 angstroms, lightweight defined as approaching NGST metric 15 kg/m²) for application to astronomical investigations
• Inflatable structures and antennas
• Lightweight x-ray telescope optics
• Lightweight, low power cryogenic coolers for miniature systems
• Superconducting devices with increased performance for cooling, detection, electronics, or other novel remote sensing applications

Analytical Instrumentation for Planetary Atmospheres Research

• Miniaturized and ruggedized Gas Chromatograph columns
• Micro-valves
• Improved stability and performance of secondary electron multipliers
• Performance increases in the areas of size and conversion efficiently of high voltage DC/DC converters
• Rigid miniature vacuum pumps

Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Technologies for Remote Sensing
Innovations to support Unmanned Aerial Vehicles' (UAV) basic and applied science and application demonstrations are sought in at least one of the following areas:

• Low cost avionic's instrumentation for precise navigation and aircraft control, must have an attitude sampling rate greater than 25Hz and an accuracy greater than .2 degrees in roll and pitch.
• Real-time sensor fusion algorithms that combine low-cost inertial, GPS, magnetometer and other sensor inputs to deliver aircraft state vectors at a rate greater than 50Hz.
• Uncooled infrared/thermal spectral imager instrument of less than 2 lbs. and no larger than .05 cubic meters in volume. Must operate autonomously in coordination with the on-board flight plan. It must have a built-in data acquisition system. The spectral bands must all be co-registered and the data must be GPS time tagged. Spectral bands should be centered at 3.75, 3.96 and 11microns as well as a band in the visible at .6 microns. Quantization bit resolution should be 10-bit minimum.

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