Instrument Technologies, Free-Form Optics, and Stray-Light Suppression

NASA seeks to push the state-of-the-art in instrumentation development for its science missions at all levels and across the spectrum, as motivated by the National Academy Astro 2020 Decadal Report and the Astrophysics Technology Update 2025. These reports highlight critical technologies, including the design, manufacturing, coating, and metrology of optical components and systems, that are essential for enabling future space observatory missions. This subtopic seeks instrument development to address the critical gaps for optical components and systems identified by these reports. Examples of advanced instrument and optical components of interest are MEMS mirrors, diffraction gratings, prisms, deformable mirrors (DMs), including surfaces with aspheric and free-form prescriptions, and free-form photonic components. Areas of optical systems development include design and modeling, non-sequential and physical optics effects and artificial intelligence-guided design, wavefront sensing and control, stray light mitigation and suppression, instrument alignment, integration, and test, and advanced spectrometer technologies. Successful proposals will show traceability to an identified technology need, subtopic critical gap, and present a feasible plan to develop the proposed technology for infusion into a potential, future NASA mission and/or into a commercial or other-Government product or process. Note that detector technologies should be proposed to INSTALG.2.S26A or COSMO.1.S26A based on wavelength. Note that observatory technologies should be proposed to COSMO.5.S26B.