Review on space application of IR opto-electronics technology in China

Summary form only given, as follows. This paper presents China's infrared opto-electronic techniques for space application. The two most important fields reviewed in this paper are the measurements on the flying attitude of satellite and Earth observation from a satellite. All of the Chinese satellites with the spin or 3-axes stability technique have used the infrared flying attitude instrument to measure the satellite attitude relative to the Earth. The infrared band of 14-16 /spl mu/m is adopted using an uncooled thermal sensitive resistance detector. The twinkling eyesight is 1.5/spl deg//spl times/1.5/spl deg/ with scanning rate of 1-5 cycle/second and attitude sensitivity of 0.15/spl deg/. The study on a high attitude resolution technique is underway. Up to now, 5 Earth observation satellites with onboard infrared remote sensing instruments have been launched. Three onboard infrared Earth observation instruments are still working in orbit. They are an infrared/visible spinning-scanning radiometer on the FY-2A geostationary meteorological satellite, a 10-channel scanning radiometer on FY-IC sun-synchronous orbit meteorological satellite and a multi-band scanning radiometer on China-Brazil-1 resources satellite. The optical and mechanical scanning structure is used for the image acquisition. HgCdTe infrared detectors are used for the short and thermal infrared channels, while the Si detector is used for the visible channel. The higher spectral resolution remote sensing technique for space application is being investigation in China.