First Earth-Imaging CubeSat with Harmonic Diffractive Lens

oleh: Nikolay Ivliev, Viktoria Evdokimova, Vladimir Podlipnov, Maxim Petrov, Sofiya Ganchevskaya, Ivan Tkachenko, Dmitry Abrameshin, Yuri Yuzifovich, Artem Nikonorov, Roman Skidanov, Nikolay Kazanskiy, Victor Soifer

Format: Article
Diterbitkan: MDPI AG 2022-05-01

Deskripsi

Launched in March 2021, the 3U CubeSat nanosatellite was the first ever to use an ultra-lightweight harmonic diffractive lens for Earth remote sensing. We describe the CubeSat platform we used; our 10 mm diameter and 70 mm focal length lens synthesis, design, and manufacturing; a custom 3D-printed camera housing built from a zero-thermal-expansion metal alloy; and the on-Earth image post-processing with a convolutional neural network resulting in images comparable in quality to classical refractive optics used for remote sensing before.