DARPA said Monday it has issued a request for information that solicits ideas for a sparse-aperture interferometer capable of measuring interference light patterns detected by smaller telescopes.
The agency wants an interferometer system that uses solar illumination or thermal self-emission from imaged objects in order to address current physical limitations to high-resolution GEO-imaging technology.
âWeâre looking for ideas on how to create ground-based sparse aperture telescope systems that would provide GEO imagery as clear as current LEO imagery,â said Lindsay Millard, DARPA program manager.
Millard added that the â100x zoom lensâ would help satellite owners âassess anomalies that happen to GEO satellitesâ and âfix problemsâ in order to prolong satellitesâ operation.
âBeyond helping us achieve our immediate needs on orbit, that improvement could significantly advance astronomy research, helping us learn about black holes and galaxy dynamics, as well as characterizing nearby exoplanets and detecting more-distant ones,â she said.
DARPA asks respondents to tackle information on direct atmospheric phase measurement, meter-class replicated optics and compensation of low-quality optics, image-formation algorithms and interferometry demonstration testbeds in their responses.
Submissions to this RFI will close on July 3, 2015.