I think this email is very worthy of sharing…… A very interesting email (and attachments) received from NASA today on an SRO lens that was recently used on the RAVEN platform that was launched as part of payload sent to the International Space Station back in February 2017.

Background:
A few years back, you provided a LWIR lens to Neptec Design Group which incorporated it into a camera and provided it to us for use on our Raven technology demonstration mission. Raven was launched on the STP-H5 payload to the International Space Station (ISS) on the SpaceX Commercial Resupply Service 10 (CRS-10) mission in February 2017. Since then, Raven has sat on its perch on station observing incoming visiting vehicles and performing relative navigation measurements. This has been done in an effort to advance NASA autonomous rendezvous and docking technologies. Please note, this lens in question is separate from an additional set of lenses you more recently provided to Neptec as part of another LWIR camera system they’re building for us for our Restore-L mission.

More information:
https://sspd.gsfc.nasa.gov/Raven.html
https://sspd.gsfc.nasa.gov/restore-L.html

Current Status:
As Raven nears the end of its three year on-orbit mission, we recently performed a visual inspection of our hardware via some of the ISS’s external HD cameras. This was done to ensure that all thermal coatings, optical lens elements, mechanisms, etc. were still as-expected. As part of this inspection, we captured some great images of the Raven sensors, including the Neptec LWIR camera which contained your lens.

Please see attached for:

What is Raven

Image showing the full front face of our Raven Sensor Enclosure (SE). Visible is the LWIR camera (top left), visible wavelength camera stray light baffle (bottom left), LIDAR transmit optics (bottom right) and LIDAR receive optics (top right). One of the station’s large solar arrays is visible in the background.

Close up image of Raven Sensor Enclosure. If you zoom in, you can clearly see the StingRay Optics branding on the lens, as well as the reflection of Earth, part of the Space Station, the DEXTRE robotic arm, and a docked Russian Soyuz spacecraft. Very cool!

Example image of a SpaceX Dragon vehicle, grappled by the station’s robotic arm prior to berthing, as seen from our LWIR camera with your StingRay lens. As you can see the image quality is exceptional.