Applied Coherent Technology Corp.

Applied Coherent Technology (ACT) is a minority owned small business, located in Herndon Virginia, that provides the government and the private sector with aerospace image processing expertise in the form of:

• system integration for  data reduction and image processing using cost effective hardware
• commercial software tools for image/signal processing and analysis, e.g.
  MSHELL - an image/signal processing language developed by ACT
  ProVIEW - a image processing environment developed by ACT
• custom algorithm and software development
• Engineering support for:
  -reduction and archival of large image data volumes
  -calibration and characterization of electro-optical imaging systems
  -image/signal analysis

COMPANY ORIGIN

ACT was founded by Dr. Erick Malaret in 1988 to provide aerospace image processing expertise to both the private and government sectors under the highly adaptable environment of a small company. Dr. Malaret has over 14 years of experience in: the development and implementation of algorithms for image processing and statistical pattern recognition, the characterization of electro-optical sensor models, and the integration of high-throughput image processing systems.

Early in 1989, Dr. Malaret developed the commercial MSHELL image processing language which more recently has evolved into  ProVIEW (A Professional Virtual Image Environment for Windows). ACT's image processing software has been extensively used under the DOD's LACE/UVPI:, Clementine, and MSTI programs. Since early 1990 ACT has been providing engineering support to the DOD in the reduction and analysis of satellite imagery.

AEROSPACE ENGINEERING SUPPORT HISTORY

ACT takes pride in pursuing and finding methods to deliver Aerospace image processing support using state-of-the-art cost effective technology without jeopardizing the actual program requirements. Specific examples are described below :

LACE Program

Rocket launch image as seen from space by the LACE/UVPI satellite (see Aviation Week issue of April 1991). Images Processed by ACT

ACT was under contract to the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) to provide engineering support for all of the image processing related effort related to the SDIO Low-power Atmospheric Compensation Experiment (LACE) satellite program. The Ultraviolet Plume Instrument (UVPI) was an SDIO calibrated plume-tracking instrument flown on the Naval Research Laboratory's LACE satellite. The UVPI's primary mission was to collect images of rocket plumes in the ultraviolet wavelengths. It's secondary mission was to collect background image data of the Earth, Earth's limb and celestial objects in the near and middle ultraviolet wavebands. The UVPI was successfully used to collect image data from four rocket launches, one ground burn of a rocket and many background observations. It contained two focal planes: a wide field-of-view tracking camera sensitive to approximately 250-450nm and a narrow field-of-view plume imager with 4 filter positions which span the 200-350 nm wavelength regime.

In the LACE program ACT was responsible for:

• system integration of all the ground based image processing hardware where customized MSHELL (now ProVIEW) workstations were used for data reduction
• data reduction and analysis of all the image data
• archiving and formatting of the image data. For over 4 months an average of 1 gigabyte of image data was calibrated per day. All of the data calibrated data was archived in the Flexible Image Transport System (FITS) format and delivered to the NRL Background Data Center
• in-flight calibration of the instruments and comparison to the ground calibration,
• quick look analysis of the observed rocket plumes,

Clementine Program

Image of the Earth As seen from the Moon by the Clementine HiRes Camera (mosaic by USGS)

The Clementine program is an example of a joint DOD/NASA effort that was undertaken to test light-weight sensors and electronics for military and civil applications. The BMDO/NRL/LLNL team designed, developed and launched the Clementine spacecraft in two years.

The Clementine spacecraft imaged the whole MOON at high resolution in 11 spectral bands, and partial coverage in other 6 spectral bands. For a period of 2 months over 5,000 Moon images were received on every orbit, i.e. every 5 hours. Most of the data was compressed in the satellite using JPEG type of compression. About 60 Gbytes of compressed image data was processed by ACT.

ACT was responsible for all the front end image processing effort related to the Mission Operations of the Clementine satellite program. ACT's support to Clementine included the management, planning and execution of tasks related to:

• Design and evaluation of data compression parameters sets to be used by the Clementine program.
• Development of custom Image Processing Software for Clementine
• Image Processing System Integration using low cost high performance hardware. ACT's ProVIEW Image Processing workstations were used to perform all the Mission operations image processing.
• Image Processing Mission Operations support (24 Hours/day)
• Quick-look sensor data analysis, i.e. decompress every image and compute basic image statistics used to establish that sensors were operating within the right performance bounds
• Pointing Assessment - compute pointing information for every image
• Archival and Formatting of all of the image data into the Planetary Data System Format (PDS).
• Documentation and production of quick-look results (radiometric, images, mosaics)

During the mission ACT established a Remote Access Center for Clementine Data. This center allowed members of the NRL's Mission Operations group, Livermore's Camera Design team, and the NASA Science Team to have access to all image data in the mission operations facility and over the INTERNET.

At the present time ACT is under contract with NASA to assist in the in-flight calibration of the Clementine spacecraft data.

MSTI2&3

ACT provided data analysis capabilities to the MSTI2 program. ACT's contributions under this program were:

• Processed large part of the MSTI2 data raw data collected, e.g. a Volcano sequence [657Kbytes]
• Identify sources for target tracking anomalies. Some of ACT results in simulating the MSTI2 tracker system are illustrated here in the form of an mpeg video clip. The tracker simulation resulted in procedures that help removed the tracker anomalies

• Wild-Fires clip [474 Kbytes]

• Investigate problems with the spacecraft telemetry data
• Provided image analysis capabilities

Presently ACT is setting up the image processing mission operations support to the MSTI3 program.

For more information contact us by:

	at malaret@act.i-lan.com
Normal Mail Address:	ACT Corp. 112 Elden St. Suite K, Herndon, VA 22070 tel. no.:(800)-304-3211.