Electro-Optical Design of Imaging Payload for a Remote Sensing Satellite

Abstract

Remote sensing using small spacecraft arising from multi-objective economic activity problems is getting more and more developed. These satellites require very accurate pointing to specific locations of interest, with high reliability and small latency. The space borne imaging systems always attempted to achieve the highest ground resolution possible with the available technology at the given time. Also mass, volume and power consumption of the spacecrafts and instruments followed the trend to miniaturization. But the most promising prospects for high resolution imaging with remote sensing satellites are connected with passive optical systems, especially push broom systems. In this paper optical system design process is described and different parameters of this process such as MTF, SNR, FOV, aperture diameter, stability and pointing, scanning schemes, detector selection, and target radiance are simulated and analyzed.