Radiation Hard and High Temperature Tolerant Thermal Imagers (HOT IR)

Harsh environments are abundant in the Solar System and the ability of current technologies to survive in extreme temperatures is limited. Specifically, Venus is a terrestrial planet with similarities to Earth and exploring how climate and geology work on Venus could potentially provide a deeper understanding of the processes at work in our own environment. Very little is known about surface geochemistry and almost nothing about mineralogy, so spectroscopic information is needed to address such important questions as the formation and rock type of the tessera and the mineralogical changes resulting from weathering caused by surface-atmosphere interactions. As such, there is an increasing interest in exploring such hot planets but so far, the missions to these extreme environments have been very limited in scope and duration. While research exploring active cooling systems for Venus persists, these are still in development, add to mission complexity, and do not operate in other extreme environments with higher temperatures or radiation. To enable new scientific missions, we propose to develop an instrument capable of taking infrared (IR) images in harsh environments (high radiation, extreme cold or high temperatures up to 500°C) using a sparse array of resonant-based micromechanical devices. In a sparse array, by definition, the number of imaging elements is reduced to save power and cost. The wavelength range of the IR sparse array can be designed to meet the science requirement of the mission. For example, for mission to Venus, the imaging array will be designed to be sensitive to wavelengths of 0.4 to 5 um (to allow collection of surface emissivity measurements over a wide spectral range). Fundamental and unique planetary science questions that can be answered by the proposed instrument concept will thus include observing the current geologic state of the surface and inferring past evolution and the relative importance of surface processes of Venus. In this three year program, we will develop an imaging IR array (that can be used in an imaging spectrometer) capable of operation in high temperature and high radiation environments and will test the instrument at 500C at the existing facility at Stanford University. The starting TRL for this effort is 2 and the target end TRL is 4-5. More »