Development of an Imaging System for Small Spacecraft

Capturing high-resolution still images and high-resolution video from remote sensing platforms can greatly contribute to both the scientific goals of a given mission and to the outreach efforts associates with such missions. Capturing images and videos of biological and physical processes (e.g., plant and microorganism growth and behavior) contribute to the understanding of the behavior of their behavior in extreme environments. Images of the Earth, stars, moon and planets from orbit and near-space can provide dramatic insights and can make the missions readily accessible to a wide audience. However, it is difficult to capture images and video in harsh environments and in systems with constrained resources (e.g., power, mass margin, volume, communication bandwidth). The goal of this project is to develop an imaging system capable of capturing high-resolution still images and high-resolution video in constrained systems operated in harsh environments. The project covers a nine month research plan that includes development of prototypes of the subsystems, flight testing of prototypes in a near-space environment on high-altitude balloons and the design of flight hardware configurations that conform to the CubeSat and CubeLab form-factors. Once the basic systems is developed, it will support a variety of mission goals from technology demonstration flights where critical flight characteristics can observed, to science missions that depend on image data, to outreach programs where high-resolution images can be used to support outreach and to a wide variety of audiences.