Recently, China Aerospace Science and Technology Group Co., Ltd. unveiled that its Beijing institute has developed the largest transmissive low-temperature infrared remote sensing camera in China, with a diameter of 0.6 meters. It has successfully completed the lens assembly and low-temperature environmental test, and will go through the final fixed focus phase process.
It is reported that China’s domestic giant infrared camera is a kind of all-optical route cooling infrared-based infrared detection system that is extremely difficult to develop. Of course, this technology can indeed provide great improvement in infrared remote sensing performance, and it also marks that China has become one of the few countries that can independently develop space infrared telescopes.
For the field of airborne infrared warning, this technology will also be widely used. Specifically, it can greatly improve the airborne early warning aircrafts and the remote detection capability of the fighters such as J-20, which can not only penetrate the clouds to find the enemy aircraft first. It can even monitor the flight trajectory of stealth fighters such as F22 and F35 fighters in real time, and significantly enhance the stealth combat capability of J-20 fighter.
The mechanism of such a giant infrared camera is that the optical system of the military observation instrument or the instrument component in the field of view will generate a large amount of heat when it is working. It is a huge heat source, and this heat would bring relatively strong interference to the detection effect, which seriously affects the normal use and even the performance of the detection instrument.
Therefore, if you want to improve the sensitivity of the infrared detection system, you must try to reduce the radiation intensity of the components of the detection instrument. For example, using low-temperature optical technology to reduce the temperature of the optical system can effectively reduce the background noise radiation intensity and make it obvious less than the target radiant intensity, to maximize the performance of the instrument itself.
At present, the two kinds of infrared low-temperature optical systems that humans have mastered are respectively all-optical cooling system and local low-temperature optical system. The former is usually used for space infrared astronomical telescopes, while the latter is mainly used in the field of earth observation.
Prior to this, as this technology has been in a highly confidential stage abroad and there is very little public data leaked, China’s research in this area has long been lagging behind, and even has not yet launched a single space infrared telescope. In the same period, about 30 space-based infrared telescopes have been launched by the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries, but this is only the previous situation.
Therefore, according to expert analysis, development of a 0.6-meter large-diameter transmissive low-temperature infrared remote sensing camera is of vital importance to China. In addition to its use for ground and deep space exploration, this technology will also be used in the military field.