Improved thermal-vacuum compatible flat plate radiometric source for system-level testing of optical sensors

In this work, development of a fiber-optically coupled, vacuum-compatible, flat plate radiometric source applicable to the characterization and calibration of remote sensing optical sensors in situ in a thermal vacuum chamber is described. The original flat plate radiometric source configuration’s performance was presented at the 2009 Berlin SPIE. Following the original effort, design upgrades were incorporated in order to improve radiometric throughput and uniformity. Results of thermal and radiometric performance, with incorporated upgrades, of a flat plate illumination source in a temperature-controlled vacuum chamber operating at liquid nitrogen temperature are presented. Applications, including use with monochromatic tunable laser sources for the end-to-end system-level testing of large aperture sensors, are briefly discussed.