This Phase I effort is focused on existing NASA test facilities related to re-entry vehicle testing, ballistics imaging, and hypervelocity imaging, which run experiments with knowledge to be gained at microsecond timescales through temperature mapping and trace gas species sensing in the short medium and long wavelength infrared (SWIR, MWIR and LWIR) bands. For example MHz shock front thermal emission, and trace gas sensing of ablation could be application topics for the proposed effort.
The NASA applications can also apply to non-NASA topics such as imaging of hypersonic ballistics in test environments, temperature mapping hypersonic craft, and active imaging of trace gas species. In addition the proposed work may benefit infrared laser range finding and velocimetry systems by enabling them to collect series of frames with microsecond precision with no on-chip memory maximum.
More »