Compact optical hyperspectral camera FREYA for CubeSat missions

Hyperspectral remote or in situ sensing play a key role in space technologies. Alongside to remote detection from an orbit used for atmospheric research (Calin et al. 2021), exploration of planetary surface characteristics such as biosphere, geological survey (Govender et al. 2007), classification of observed objects such as satellites (Serebryanskiy et al. 2022) or vessels (Kanjir et al. 2018) by analyzing the reflection spectra, emission spectroscopy has a great application potential for remote measurements, for instance analysis of propulsion systems (Hudson and Lemmer 2017), plasma created by natural (Cipriano et al. 2018) or artificial (Lee et al. 2017) objects entering the planetary atmosphere (meteors) of kinetic impactors as planned for Moon or asteroid missions (Cheng et al. 2018); as well as for in situ analysis executed by landers (Lasue et al. 2012), rovers as demonstrated for Mars (Clegg et al. 2017), (Wiens et al. 2012) or remotely from a small flyby or orbiting satellites (Arnold et al. 2019), (Chauhan et al. 2015), (Christensen et al. 2018). In this field, an important task is development of miniaturized multipurpose hyperspectral instruments rather than customized spectral analyzers developed for a specific satellite mission or even utilization of quite large and expensive spectrometers such as echelle (Werner et al. 2008) or Fourier transform (Persky 1995), which do not offer broad field of view and are more suitable for large orbiters or landers.