Thermal active optical technology to achieve in-orbit wavefront aberration correction for optical remote sensing satellites

• xiaoyi zheng, Shikai Zan, Xueying Lv, fan zhang, and Liu Zhang
• received 01/05/2024; accepted 04/02/2024; posted 04/02/2024; Doc. ID 517834
• Abstract: Image quality and resolution are important factors affecting the application value ofremote sensing images. Although increasing the optical aperture of space optical remote sensors(SORSs) improves image resolution, it exacerbates the effects of the space environment onimaging quality. Thus, this study proposes thermal active optical technology (TAO) to enhanceimage quality while increasing the optical aperture of SORSs by actively correcting in-orbitwavefront aberrations. Replacing traditional wavefront detection and reconstruction withnumerical calculation and simulation analysis, more realistic in-orbit SORS wavefrontaberrations are obtained. Numerical and finite element analyses demonstrate that nonlinearitiesin TAO control lead to the failure of traditional wavefront correction algorithms. To addressthis, we use a neural network algorithm combining CNN and ResNet. Simulation results showthat the residual of the systematic wavefront RMS error for SORS reduces to 1/100 λ. The staticand dynamic modular transfer functions are improved, and the structural similarity index isrecovered by over %, highlighting the effectiveness of TAO in image quality enhancement.The static and thermal vacuum experiments demonstrate the wide applicability and engineeringprospects of TAO.