TUNOPTIX INC — National Aeronautics and Space Administration SBIR Phase I: S1

Description

Achieving NASA#39;s strategic goal of #39;Expanding Human Knowledge through New Scientific Discoveries#39; requires high-performance instrumentation capable of operating under extreme conditions while maintaining a low size, weight, and power. Hyperspectral imaging (HSI) systems represent a class of instruments that have played a significant role in previous NASA missions in remote sensing andnbsp;planetary surveying on Earth and other planetary systems. The HSI systems on these missions have relied onnbsp;bulky opticsnbsp;that also require large system sizes to achieve high spectral resolution. The large size and mass of these spectrometers represent a significant barrier to widespread adoption due to the opportunity cost of the space, weight, and power consumption.Tunoptix proposes to utilize meta-optics in conjunction with computational imaging to drastically reduce the SWaP of HSI systems while maintaining high spectral and spatial resolution. A meta-optic consists of an arraynbsp;of subwavelength scatterers, which locally control the amplitude, phase, and spectrum of incident light with high spatial resolution. A metasurface is optically thin, with an active layer thickness of of less than a micrometer, and total optical thickness on the order of millimeters.nbsp;Tunoptix will develop a HSI system based on an optical front-endnbsp;and computational back-end. This approach leverages the unique ability of meta-optics to implement near-arbitrary optical functionalitiesnbsp;to implement a well-conditionednbsp;wavelength-dependent transformation on incident light. This will then be decoded using a low latency postprocessing algorithm to extract a high-fidelity hyperspectral image. With this method, Tunoptix well demonstrate a compact, snapshot polarization independent HSI system with F/1.8, a 10 cm xnbsp; 8 cm x 4 cm form factor, and a mass of less than 1nbsp;kgnbsp;operating over a bandwidth of 350-1050 nm, and with over 40 channels.nbsp;