DEFINITION:

Remote sensing instruments and sensors include components, sensors, and instruments sensitive to electromagnetic radiation, particles (charged, neutral, dust), electromagnetic fields, both direct current (DC) and alternating current (AC), acoustic energy, seismic energy, or whatever physical phenomenology the science requires.

Note: see also 1-H-8 and 1-I-4.

(Source: NASA TA8.1. See also ESA TD 16B and 16C)

SUBDOMAINS:

1. Detectors and Focal Planes: Improve sensitivity and operating temperature of single-element and large-array devices.
2. Electronics: Radiation-hardened, extreme environment capable, and data processing electronics with reduced volume, mass, and power.
3. Optical Components: High-throughput optics with large fields of view, high stability, spectral resolution, and uniformity at many different temperatures.
4. Microwave, Millimeter-, and Submillimeter Waves: Transmitters and receivers: low-noise amplifier technologies, with reliable low-power high-speed digital- and mixed-signal processing electronics, and algorithms.
5. Lasers: Reliable, highly stable, efficient, radiation hardened, and long lifetime (> 5 years).
6. Cryogenic/Thermal: Active technologies used to cool instruments and focal planes, sensors, and large optical systems.