First Earth-Imaging CubeSat with Harmonic Diffractive Lens
Nikolay Ivliev, Viktoria Evdokimova, Vladimir Podlipnov, Maksim Petrov, S. V. Ganchevskaya, Ivan Tkachenko, Dmitrii A. Abrameshin, Yuri Yuzifovich, Артем Никоноров, Р. В. Скиданов, Nikolay L. Kazanskiy, В. А. Сойфер
Abstract
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.