Earth-observing Photonic Integrated Circuit (EPIC) Science Instrumentation

There is a vibrant community of researchers in academia and industry that are developing photonic integrated circuits (PICs) that can be used for remote sensing instrumentation. The Earth-observing Photonic Integrated Circuit (EPIC) Multispectral Aerosol Polarimeter (MAP) mission was developed at the Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center (ATC) to investigate the properties of aerosol and greenhouse gases (GHG) from a constellation of orbiting PIC sensors. Each sensor in the EPIC MAP constellation is a tiny imaging spectro-polarimeter that is sensitive to multiple wavelength bands from the visible through the infrared. Light is collected by pairs of millimeter-sized lenslets that couple the light into the circuit on the wafer. Waveguides then route the light through structures that separate the photons by wavelength, before combining them in two arms of an interferometer on the chip. Each pair of lenslets on the PIC is analogous to a pair of radio dishes and serve as a baseline for the imager. The performance specifications for ground sampling distance and revisit times are ambitiously set in the EPIC MAP mission to significantly exceed the requirements for objectives that are detailed by the scientific community in the 2017 Earth Science Decadal Survey. EPIC MAP is currently planned as a constellation of 3U cubesats where each payload is on a dedicated satellite, however the sensors could also be hosted payloads on a commercial constellation. The NASA Earth Science Technology Office has partnered with LM ATC to develop and test the PIC instrumentation that is fundamental to the EPIC MAP mission. In this presentation I will summarize the EPIC MAP mission and review the status of PIC component development.