Optical Design of Multispectral Cameras for Space Applications

ARIEL DRUCAROFF; SONIA MARCELA COTES

Ciudad Autonoma de Buenos Aires

Simposio; 1st IAA Latin American Symposium on Small Satellites; 2017

Instituto Colomb-CoNAE/Univ. Nac. de San Martin- Bs. As, Argentina y la Academia Internacional de Astronáutica (IAA)

In a context in which multiple factors of degradation are causing drastic and rapid changes to the ecosystems of the planet, survey of the state of health of ocean ecosystems is arousing growing interest in the international scientific community. To this end, some large-scale remote sensing optical instruments have been developed to perform wide field of view measurements of many discrete spectral bands in visible, near infrared and short wave infrared ranges. These instruments must comply with several very demanding requirements (such as very high standards for signal-to-noise ratio and very low polarization sensitivity) to obtain, in scenarios of low signal and high content of other light sources which should be discarded, products of scientific interest and application within the field of studies of Ocean Color, which nowadays constitutes a whole research discipline. Developing an ocean color mission, carrying the necessary optical instruments on board a small low-cost satellite is a major challenge, which begins with the selection of appropriate detectors and an optical design as simple and compact as possible. The present work discusses the core challenging elements for the design of two of the main instruments in the SABIAMAR mission by CoNAE and AEB, the VIS/NIR and NIR/SWIR cameras under development at INVAP as CoNAE´s main contractor for this project.