NASA Selects Zyberwear For Development Of Terahertz Spectrometer

NASA is looking for an imaging spectrometer to map atmospheric constituents from orbit. Zyberwear is looking for a way to enhance its novel focal plane array technology to do rapid security screening for chemical threats.

NASA has awarded a $69,956 Phase I SBIR contract to develop a large-aperture scanning optical filter for the terahertz spectral region. In orbit this might be used with a single detector as a spectrometer, or with a detector array to image the atmospheric concentration maps of different molecular species such as ozone, H₂O, CH₄, N₃O, NO₂, HNO₃, etc.

In Phase I Zyberwear will demonstrate the feasibility of its novel Fabry-Perot scanning filter for the THz spectrum with an unprecedented combination of resolution and scanning range, using exotic materials and fabrication methods. Methods will also be developed for nanometer-scale measurement of scan position over tens of millimeters. In Phase II these will be integrated into a space-qualified matchbox-sized scanning filter to be placed over the aperture of a THz camera.

In addition to this development of an new capability for NASA, the importance of this work lies in its immediate application to the $2.6 Billion passenger and luggage screening market: with a noninvasive rapid viewing and imaging detection by chemical species (TNT, C4, cocaine, marijuana, etc).

Since 2005 Zyberwear has been developing the key technologies to introduce system products to the physical security and inspection markets, and the first of these products will result from this new program: one instrument to replace several very expensive screening systems now in use and deliver the customer much greater capability and speed at a lower cost.

NASA -- more