Session
Poster Session 1
Location
Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT
Abstract
Crop residue is an important metric used for agricultural land-use monitoring and climate science research. Estimating crop residue coverage is essential to sustainable agricultural practices. There already exist scientific hyperspectral satellites, such as PRISMA and EnMAP, that can be used for crop residue estimation; however, they are very expensive to build and cannot be monopolized by individual farms. This leaves a gap in satellite remote sensing solutions which can be deployed operationally and at the farm scale. We seek to fill this gap by developing a low-cost satellite solution for crop residue estimation. The University of Toronto Aerospace Team is developing “FINCH EYE”, the optical payload for the upcoming FINCH 3U CubeSat, to address this sensing gap.
We conceived of a novel ultra-compact push-broom architecture with a volume phase-holographic “grism” dispersive element to keep the design compact and simplify the mechanical assembly. The FINCH EYE will image hyperspectral data from 900nm to 1700nm at 10nm spectral resolution, with a spatial resolution of 100m, and a SNR of ~100. A preliminary feasibility analysis determined that these performance specifications can be achieved within the tight mass and volume constraints of a 3U CubeSat while potentially yielding scientifically valuable data.
In this paper, we will describe the optical design of FINCH EYE, which consists of a commercial objective lens, an InGaAs camera, and a custom lens-grism-lens spectrograph. We will also describe the optomechanical housing, emphasizing design features that facilitate proper alignment during assembly. Simulations in ANSYS ZEMAX OpticStudio verify the optical performance of the design we propose.
Document Type
Event
FINCH EYE: The Optical and Optomechanical Design of a GRISM-Based SWIR Hyperspectral Imaging Payload for a 3U CubeSat
Salt Palace Convention Center, Salt Lake City, UT
Crop residue is an important metric used for agricultural land-use monitoring and climate science research. Estimating crop residue coverage is essential to sustainable agricultural practices. There already exist scientific hyperspectral satellites, such as PRISMA and EnMAP, that can be used for crop residue estimation; however, they are very expensive to build and cannot be monopolized by individual farms. This leaves a gap in satellite remote sensing solutions which can be deployed operationally and at the farm scale. We seek to fill this gap by developing a low-cost satellite solution for crop residue estimation. The University of Toronto Aerospace Team is developing “FINCH EYE”, the optical payload for the upcoming FINCH 3U CubeSat, to address this sensing gap.
We conceived of a novel ultra-compact push-broom architecture with a volume phase-holographic “grism” dispersive element to keep the design compact and simplify the mechanical assembly. The FINCH EYE will image hyperspectral data from 900nm to 1700nm at 10nm spectral resolution, with a spatial resolution of 100m, and a SNR of ~100. A preliminary feasibility analysis determined that these performance specifications can be achieved within the tight mass and volume constraints of a 3U CubeSat while potentially yielding scientifically valuable data.
In this paper, we will describe the optical design of FINCH EYE, which consists of a commercial objective lens, an InGaAs camera, and a custom lens-grism-lens spectrograph. We will also describe the optomechanical housing, emphasizing design features that facilitate proper alignment during assembly. Simulations in ANSYS ZEMAX OpticStudio verify the optical performance of the design we propose.
