Photonics/​Optics

Typically, the cost of a spaceborne imaging system is driven by the size and mass of the primary aperture. Innovative solutions for imagers that are less complex and are lightweight are very desirable. Currently, telescopes such as JWST and ATLAST are very expensive and very complex.

NASA Langley Research Center has developed a novel spectral analysis system that provides rapid multispectral analysis and imaging in a miniaturized system design. Typical spectrometers make use of linear gratings with linear slits or charge-coupled device (CCD) arrays to separate and detect...

Current science objectives, such as high-contrast imaging of exoplanets, have led to the development of highorder adaptive optics (AO) systems possessing several thousand deformable mirror (DM) actuators. These systems typically rely on integrator-based control...

NASA Langley Research Center has developed a novel approach for a high-density optical data storage system to advance the typical capabilities of an optical data storage system. Operating at any laser wavelength from infrared (IR), visible, ultraviolet (UV), and X-ray...

NASA's Langley Research Center and Science Applications International Corporation have developed a method of processing data from Fourier transform spectroscopy (FTS) measurements that improves upon existing methods. This method is simpler, more accurate, faster, and less expensive than previous methods. It...

NASA's Langley Research Center has discovered a new approach to achieving a laser focal point size much smaller than the wavelength of light used, and smaller than that obtained using conventional micro zone plate lenses. The Photonic Densely Accumulated Ray-poinT...

This invention, developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, was originally conceived as a high-accuracy, high-sensitivity, bi-axial Sun angle sensor, but has also been proposed for applications involving the general field of precisely measuring the direction in which light travels toward the...

Visible nulling coronagraphy and interferometry requires that the wavefront errors be held to unprecedented precision in the presence of environmental disturbances. A Null Diversity algorithm is used to first attain the precision, but it does not execute at high enough temporal bandwidth to hold the...