Stabilized dispersive focal plane systems for space

As the costs of space missions continue to rise, the demand for compact, low mass, low-cost technologies that maintain high reliability and facilitate high performance is increasing. One such technology is the stabilized dispersive focal plane system (SDFPS). This technology provides image stabilization while simultaneously delivering spectroscopic or direct imaging functionality using only a single optical path and detector. Typical systems require multiple expensive optical trains and/or detectors, sometimes at the expense of photon throughput. The SDFPS is ideal for performing wide-field low-resolution space-based spectroscopic and direct-imaging surveys. In preparation for a suborbital flight, we have built and ground tested a prototype SDFPS that will concurrently eliminate unwanted image blurring due to the lack of adequate platform stability, while producing images in both spectroscopic and direct-imaging modes. We present the overall design, testing results, and potential scientific applications.