Contract Will Make Technology Available for Numerous Aircraft & Spacecraft Applications and Will Enhance Weather Forecasting
Michigan Aerospace Corporation (MAC), a provider of optical products and advanced engineering services, today announced that it had received the first phase of a contract from the Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) of Johns Hopkins University for development of a Geostationary Imaging Fabry-Perot Spectrometer (GIFS). Under this $500K first phase of the $1.5M multi-year contract, MAC is responsible for designing and fabricating a spectrometer qualified for flight aboard a LearJet 25C aircraft as a precursor to fabrication of the final spaceflight instrument.
The instrument is based on MAC’s Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology, and will enable measurements of cloud top temperature, pressure and altitude on a global scale, when deployed in geostationary orbit. Introduction of these data points into weather forecasting models will lead to significant improvements in the forecasting of weather events, including hurricane motion and intensity.
Commenting on the importance of this new instrument, Scott Lindemann, Manager of the Optical Products Business Unit said, “Successful deployment of the GIFS instrument will not only provide important meteorological data points which are currently unavailable, but will also represent a significant advancement in the availability of platforms for the deployment of LIDAR based technologies, including aircraft and spacecraft applications.”