{"project":{"acronym":"","projectId":91484,"title":"Development of Optics and Detectors for Advanced CMB Polarization Measurements","primaryTaxonomyNodes":[{"taxonomyNodeId":10748,"taxonomyRootId":8816,"parentNodeId":10747,"level":3,"code":"TX08.2.1","title":"Mirror Systems","definition":"Mirror systems development aims to provide increased sensitivity and resolution, such as improved resolution of X-ray grazing incidence optics and reduced areal costs for aperture systems > 10 m in diameter.","exampleTechnologies":"Ground metrology and systems; integrated electronic, integrated photonic, sensor readouts that enable significant data compression; low-noise, low-power, high-performance analog and mixed signal electronic components, and electronics packaging technology capable of operating in and surviving extreme temperatures. Sensor electronics designs to accommodate reduced size, weight, and power (SWaP), including wireless networking techniques. Analog and Mixed-Signal Instrument front end electronics ASICs, FPGAs and discrete components, space cube, onboard SAR processor, MUSTANG, supporting nanoelectronic elements, and supporting high-voltage power supplies.","hasChildren":false,"hasInteriorContent":true}],"startTrl":2,"currentTrl":3,"endTrl":3,"benefits":"Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have been essential to the development of modern cosmology. Future observations will provide cosmological constraints from structure formation as well as improved characterization of inflation in the early universe. This project works toward the development of optics and detector technologies for a next generation instrument to be deployed on the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. The research conducted under this fellowship will contribute towards improving the technology readiness levels of all the associated technologies for use in future NASA missions.","description":"Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have been essential to the development of modern cosmology. Future observations will provide cosmological constraints from structure formation as well as improved characterization of inflation in the early universe. Starting in 2008, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) measured the CMB temperature on arcminute scales, discovered galaxy clusters through the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect, and when combined with measurements from NASA's WMAP satellite provided evidence for the existence of dark energy for the first time using CMB measurements alone. With this NSTRF fellowship I plan to work towards the development of optics and detector technologies for a next generation instrument to be deployed on ACT. ACT is a six-meter telescope located in the Atacama Desert in Chile at an elevation of 5190 m. A polarization sensitive upgrade to ACT, known as ACTPol, is now beginning observations. Throughout the length of the fellowship, we will work to implement and observe with ACTPol. We will be able to study the growth of cosmic structure in our universe via detections of galaxy clusters and gravitational lensing of the CMB and will improve constraints on cosmological parameters that describe the early universe. With the use of approximately 3,000 superconducting detectors operating at 90 GHz and 150 GHz, ACTPol will enable high precision measurements of the polarization of the CMB. One of my goals during the fellowship is to help develop a future upgrade to ACT that will provide wider frequency coverage with many more detectors. An important aspect of this project will be research into reading out larger superconducting detector arrays, which could impact technologies for future NASA space missions, such as a next generation X-ray observatory or the Inflation Probe. This as well as research on silicon optics will be conducted in collaboration with researchers at NASA’s GSFC. The optics research is relevant to measurements over a wide range of wavelengths, from far infrared to millimeter wave, and could be used on future NASA missions at these wavelengths. The research conducted under this fellowship will contribute towards improving the technology readiness levels of all the associated technologies for use in future NASA missions.","startYear":2015,"startMonth":6,"endYear":2017,"endMonth":7,"statusDescription":"Completed","principalInvestigators":[{"contactId":337198,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Michael","lastName":"Niemack","fullName":"Michael D Niemack","fullNameInverted":"Niemack, Michael D","middleInitial":"D","primaryEmail":"niemack@cornell.edu","publicEmail":false,"nacontact":false}],"programDirectors":[{"contactId":84634,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Claudia","lastName":"Meyer","fullName":"Claudia M Meyer","fullNameInverted":"Meyer, Claudia M","middleInitial":"M","primaryEmail":"claudia.m.meyer@nasa.gov","publicEmail":true,"nacontact":false}],"programExecutives":[{"contactId":84634,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Claudia","lastName":"Meyer","fullName":"Claudia M Meyer","fullNameInverted":"Meyer, Claudia M","middleInitial":"M","primaryEmail":"claudia.m.meyer@nasa.gov","publicEmail":true,"nacontact":false}],"programManagers":[{"contactId":183514,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Hung","lastName":"Nguyen","fullName":"Hung D Nguyen","fullNameInverted":"Nguyen, Hung D","middleInitial":"D","primaryEmail":"hung.d.nguyen@nasa.gov","publicEmail":true,"nacontact":false}],"projectManagers":[{"contactId":506293,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Edward","lastName":"Wollack","fullName":"Edward J Wollack","fullNameInverted":"Wollack, Edward J","middleInitial":"J","primaryEmail":"edward.j.wollack@nasa.gov","publicEmail":true,"nacontact":false}],"coInvestigators":[{"contactId":52430,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Brian","lastName":"Koopman","fullName":"Brian Koopman","fullNameInverted":"Koopman, Brian","publicEmail":false,"nacontact":false}],"website":"https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/home/index.html","libraryItems":[],"transitions":[{"transitionId":75698,"projectId":91484,"partner":"Other","transitionDate":"2015-06-01","path":"Advanced From","relatedProjectId":91355,"relatedProject":{"acronym":"","projectId":91355,"title":"Electromagnetic Field Measurements on sRLV","startTrl":4,"currentTrl":7,"endTrl":7,"benefits":"This low-cost technology seeks to characterize the electromagnetic (EM) environment inside, and in the vicinity of, suborbital reusable launch vehicles. The resulting data will benefit the commercial space industry as well as NASA scientists and engineers involved in future missions.","description":"We will demonstrate an instrument suite consisting of modified Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) electric field mill and magnetometer sensors for observing the electromagnetic (EM) environment inside and in the vicinity of suborbital reusable launch vehicles. The initial objective of this experiment is to characterize the electromagnetic field environment inside the spacecraft to understand the potential effects of strong external and internally generated fields on the spacecraft and payloads. Such initial experiments will also demonstrate the feasibility of making future global electric circuit measurements on a routine basis to assess the influence of global change on the Earth’s complex electrical environment.","startYear":2013,"startMonth":3,"endYear":2022,"endMonth":10,"statusDescription":"Completed","website":"https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/home/index.html","program":{"acronym":"FO","active":true,"description":"
The President’s 2010 National Space Policy:
“A robust and competitive commercial space sector is vital to continued progress in space. The United States is committed to encouraging and facilitating the growth of a U.S. commercial space sector that supports U.S. needs, is globally competitive, and advances U.S. leadership in the generation of new markets and innovation-driven entrepreneurship.”
Flight Opportunities directly answers the call of the President’s policy through the acquisition of suborbital launch services on commercial suborbital launch vehicles. By purchasing flight opportunities on U.S. commercial vehicles the Flight Opportunities program is encouraging and facilitating the growth of this market while simultaneously providing pathways to advance the technology readiness of a wide range of new launch vehicle and space technologies.
One of the greatest challenges NASA faces in incorporating advanced technologies into future missions is bridging the mid-technology readiness level (TRL) (4-7) gap (or “valley of death”), between component or prototype testing in a lab or ground facility setting, and the final infusion of a new technology into critical path exploration or science mission development. To cross this gap, the proposed new technology must pass system level testing in a relevant operational environment. Maturing a space technology to flight readiness status through relevant environment testing is a significant challenge from cost, schedule, and technical risk perspectives.
FO has its lineage from the former Innovative Partnership Program (IPP) of FY09, specifically the Facilitated Access to the Space Environment for Technology (FAST) project and the Commercial Reusable Suborbital Research (CRuSR) project. The FAST and CRuSR activities are continued within the FO Program, as the parabolic and suborbital, flight campaigns, respectively. The flights will provide opportunities to expose new technologies to low-g environments and/or high altitude environments. The intent is to demonstrate and mature various technologies for future applications. These emerging technologies will come from the nine other programs within the Space Technology Mission Directorate, from the other Mission Directorates and external sources (other Government Agencies, Academia, and Commercial Industries.
The NASA Flight Opportunities (FO) Program has been established as a part of the Space Technologies Mission Directorate (STMD) to rapidly develop, demonstrate and infuse revolutionary, high-payoff technologies through transparent, collaborative partnerships, expanding the boundaries of the aerospace enterprise by providing the nation’s investments in space technologies to make a difference in the world around us. FO focuses on maturation of technologies that are of benefit to multiple customers, to flight readiness status with an outcome of Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6 or higher. These crosscutting capabilities are those that advance multiple future aerospace missions, including flight projects where near-space or in-space demonstration is needed before the capability can transition to direct mission application. Maturing technologies to a higher TRL status through relevant flight opportunities testing is a significant challenge from both a cost and risk perspective.
","programId":72,"responsibleMd":{"acronym":"STMD","canUserEdit":false,"city":"","external":false,"linkCount":0,"organizationId":4875,"organizationName":"Space Technology Mission Directorate","organizationType":"NASA_Mission_Directorate","naorganization":false,"organizationTypePretty":"NASA Mission Directorate"},"responsibleMdId":4875,"stockImageFileId":36656,"title":"Flight Opportunities"},"lastUpdated":"2024-2-6","releaseStatusString":"Released","viewCount":100,"endDateString":"Oct 2022","startDateString":"Mar 2013"},"infoText":"Advanced from another project within the program","infoTextExtra":"Another project within the program (Electromagnetic Field Measurements on sRLV)","dateText":"June 2015"},{"transitionId":75697,"projectId":91484,"transitionDate":"2017-07-01","path":"Closed Out","details":"In the four years of my NASA Space Technology Research Fellowship the state of the art in optics and detectors technologies has progressed rapidly. In my first year, ACTPol had just deployed the first of three polarization sensitive kilopixel detector arrays. In the time since, ACTPol has seen full deployment, including the first multichroic detector array of its kind, observing simultaneously at 90 and 150 GHz. Most recently, all three original ACTPol detector arrays have been upgraded to three new multichroic arrays, spanning from 90 GHz to 220 GHz, forming Advanced ACTPol and doubling the number of detectors on the sky from ~3,000 to ~6,000. Starting with the first ACTPol array, I developed a unique optical modeling based polarization calibration. This technique propagates the fabricated detector angles through the optical chain of the telescope to the sky. The lenses in the telescope receiver are off-axis and thus influence the propagation of the polarization vectors through the camera according to their Fresnel coefficient. This additional polarization rotation has been shown to be critical input to the calibration of the polarization angles for the ACTPol detectors for the mapping of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization. This is confirmed by checking that our EB-nulling angle, the global polarization rotation required to zero the EB-cross correlation power spectrum, is consistent with zero. This calibration procedure continues to be used on the second generation of ACTPol, known as Advanced ACTPol. While having an EB-nulling angle consistent with zero is a good check of the calibration procedure, a more direct measure of the detector angles, and possibly the rotation caused by the optics in the ACTPol receiver, is desirable. For this purpose, I developed and performed measurements in the field with a series of polarizers. Taking advantage of hardware developed to smoothly rotate a set of new metamaterial half wave plates on Advanced ACTPol, I rotated these polarizers at a constant rate directly in front of the telescope receiver. This produces a sinusoidal signal on each detector, allowing for the extraction of each detector angle through the determination of the phase of this sine wave. The measure of performance of this method has been the ability to determine if two orthogonal detectors are out of phase. Our best polarization grid measurements so far have achieved a scatter of ±2 degrees. As the next generation of telescopes were being developed, the need to cover several different frequency bands to account for foregrounds such as synchrotron and polarized dust became apparent. This lead to the Advanced ACTPol design containing four multichroic arrays, with science bands at 27, 39, 90, 150, and 220 GHz. These detectors require different physical geometries to observe at each frequency. I worked on selecting those geometries, specifically the geometries of the weak thermal link connecting the transition edge sensors (TES) with the cold based on measurements performed at Cornell on devices with varying leg geometries, fitting to a model, and selecting the geometry that best achieves the desired detector parameters. The 90, 150, and 220 GHz detectors have all been fabricated and are deployed and on the sky now. The 27 and 39 GHz detectors are being fabricated now and will be deployed in early 2018. The field of observational cosmology continues developing at a rapid pace. I have learned about and developed these optics and detector technologies for ACTPol and Advanced ACTPol and am now getting to apply the tools and techniques I have developed to the early design stages for two new telescopes, CCATp and the Simons Observatory, as both begin planning and construction. Further optics and detector technology developments made on CCATp and SO will establish large scale detector arrays and optics technologies for use in future NASA space based missions such as the Inflation Probe.","infoText":"Closed out","infoTextExtra":"","dateText":"July 2017"}],"responsibleMd":{"acronym":"STMD","canUserEdit":false,"city":"","external":false,"linkCount":0,"organizationId":4875,"organizationName":"Space Technology Mission Directorate","organizationType":"NASA_Mission_Directorate","naorganization":false,"organizationTypePretty":"NASA Mission Directorate"},"program":{"acronym":"STRG","active":true,"description":"\tThe Space Technology Research Grants Program will accelerate the development of "push" technologies to support the future space science and exploration needs of NASA, other government agencies and the commercial space sector. Innovative efforts with high risk and high payoff will be encouraged. The program is composed of two competitively awarded components.
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