MZA ASSOCIATES CORPORATION — Department of Defense SBIR Phase I: SF222-0008

Description

The U.S. military has an increasing reliance on space operations, and optical space surveillance in a critical function. Imaging space objects from the ground is enabled by laser beacon adaptive optics. While laser beacons are very useful, they are not perfect sources, and having a surrogate source to act like a real beacon can be tremendously useful. These can be used for calibration and research when the telescope is unavailable and in testbed laboratories for research. There have been several past attempts at making surrogate sources for laser beacons, and they have been only partially successful. MZA proposes to fabricate a source object whose imagery and wavefront sensor measurements mimic those exhibited in wave-optics simulations (and on-sky data if available). Finite size and elongated shape are key properties of the surrogate objects. The fabrication process will be developed and tested in a laboratory with a camera and wavefront sensor. Additionally, MZA will design an optical system concept for sharing an aperture between surrogate objects for both Rayleigh and sodium beacon surrogate objects. This design concept will include phase screens below and above the Rayleigh beacon surrogate to account for focal anisioplantism.