Optical Design Criteria for a High Resolution Space Camera

Design and construction of a High Resolution Space Imager is a very interesting Interdisciplinary field. In this paper, Optical design considerations were discussed. First, optical design criteria for a high resolution space camera were discussed. We show that how to calculate the true optical system parameters such as optical entrance pupil diameter and effective focal length to have true effective resolution by Mission Requirement Analysis (i.e. Swath width and Resolution). Second, we have been shown that how to choose a scheme from many telescope configurations. Third, factors influencing overall System MTF were discussed. As an example, an RCC (Richey-Chrétien Cassegrain) scheme for an orbit with altitude of 360km, with 1m Resolution were designed. Based on initial configuration parameters, automatic optimization is executed in ZEMAX program, and a new telescope is obtained with parameters as follows: aperture is 482mm, f/number is 10.9, FOV is 1.90, and angular resolution is better than 1.7μrad.