Optomechanical inertial sensors and their applications to Earth and Planetary science

Accelerometry has become crucial for monitoring mass change and geophysical phenomena within the Earth, as well as dynamics on planetary systems. Optomechanical inertial sensors are novel alternative instruments that feature characteristic advantages such as lower cost, size, weight and power (CSWaP) with acceleration sensitivities on par with GRACE. Reduced CSWaP makes these instruments suitable for enhancing mission reliability as redundant accelerometers, and can also improve science data quality by providing measurements of thruster firings and transient effects, among others.

Moreover, low CSWaP optomechanical instruments would enable cost-effective mission designs, spacecraft miniaturization, simplified architectures, as well as the deployment of constellations of satellite pairs flying at lower altitudes.

We will discuss some of the potential science cases that can be addressed with this technology, as well as current status and progress in the development of these novel low-frequency optomechanical inertial sensing technologies.

We will present updates on recent measurements, showing noise floors in the order of 8 pico-g above 60 mHz in our laboratory, as well as their planned use in upcoming space demonstrations.