Welcome to UTAT Space Systems Optics. Our team is designing the satellite payload: the FINCH EYE Hyperspectral Imaging System. Our goals for the FINCH EYE payload are to be able to take hyperspectral pictures of the ground at ~100m x 100m resolution over a ~10km ground swath field of view. Just like RGB information on a regular camera, each point on the ground will have spectral information, but much more detailed - the spectrum will span the short-wave infrared (SWIR) range from 900nm-1700nm, with points every 10nm. The payload should weigh <500g with the mechanical housing and fit into a volume of 10cm x 10cm x 15cm (1.5U). FINCH EYE employs a push-broom scanning architecture, in which the satellite images one “line” on the Earth in each frame, spreading it into a spectrum across the orthogonal axis on the camera sensor array, and sweeping over the ground while passing over the Earth to get the remaining spatial dimension. The novel aspect of the FINCH EYE’s hyperspectral imager is the use of a GRISM as a dispersive element, which allows for a compact in-line optical assembly. The major challenges with designing FINCH EYE primarily arise from the limiting volume allocation and the outer-space environmental conditions, such as extreme temperature fluctuations, launch vibrations, vacuum, and radiation.
Our deliverables to UTAT SS
Purchases & Component Selection
CAD software, platforms
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Start here if you’re joining the team
Optics in a (Fairly Large) Nutshell
Summary of our operations
We organize important information in the below sections. We anticipate producing pages with information on each topic in the lists below.
General optics ECE318, Optical Design related, SNR related, Lectures prepared by this team
textbooks, links to optics academy, a collection of useful flashcards
Literature (Eismann, papers), Articles from Edmund Optics and Thorlabs IN GENERAL BACKGROUND
add useful stuff there as you come across it.
Geometric Optics Design of FINCH EYE
Design Framework for FINCH EYE
radiance, noise, SNR. papers with explanation
Optical Design of FINCH EYE, Evaluating expected SNR, Designing the Dispersive Relay, A closer look at aberrations and stray light
Foreoptic, GRISM, Camera, All Else
We primarily use ZEMAX, and a little bit of SolidWorks.