Space PressurE Chromatic confocal Sensor (SPECS)

We propose the chromatic confocal pressure sensor to address the current difficulties of successfully measuring low pressures (<7000Pa) during a spacecraft’s atmospheric entry by designing a benchtop sensor analog that can perform such measurements, whilst also being robust to the extreme environments. The use of an optical sensor on SPECS to measure low flight pressures provides several advantages over the current state-of-the-art such as, reduced weight, immune to EMI/EMC, increased operable temperature range, resolution, and frequency response. With the completion of this project EDL missions will gain a viable pressure sensor technology that could solve numerous limitations with current state-of-the-art-pressure sensors. One potential obstacle is that supporting lab equipment may not have the resolution to show the true performance of the optical sensor in this bench configuration, however, other configurations are being considered to minimize risk. Measuring low pressures as found on the backshell of entry vehicles that experience such harsh environments is extremely difficult, SPECS mitigates all the state-of-the-art risks, while significantly improving the measurement capability.

By the end of FY24, a working benchtop sensor demonstration would be produced to show that a chromatic confocal pressure sensor is a new and viable sensor technology. The end goal for this idea would be to fully develop a space flight sensor that would successfully ease any difficulty to make these low-pressure measurements in harsh space environments and would be an invaluable measurement capability add to the Entry Science Investigation (ESI) requirement for competed missions and for flagship class aeroshell instrumentation. As an example, if this sensor was already matured in its design, it would be highly sought to fly on the Dragonfly mission to Titan, as part of the DrEAM EDL instrumentation. The risk of not funding an innovation such as this, is the continued difficulty in the development of a capability at NASA to predict and understand dynamic (in)stability. NASA invests heavily in multiple facilities (Vertical Spin Tunnel, Magnetic Suspension Wind Tunnel, Ballistic Ranges, Transonic Dynamics Tunnel) to provide dynamic stability data, with various experimental artifacts and difficulties interpreting data, SPECS would provide a benchmark flight data-set to anchor and further develop models.

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