Development and Flight of an Imaging Fabry-Perot Spectrometer for Atmospheric Studies

Abstract

One of 17 UN Sustainable Development and Goals (SDGs) is to take urgent action to combat climate change and its devastating impacts. The climate change impacts are seen throughout every aspect of the world we live in, and climate change will continue to have a significant impact on ecosystems and organisms. Monitoring and evaluation are critical in ensuring the long-term success of climate adaptation initiatives, plans, policies, and actions. An imaging Fabry-Perot spectrometer (FPS) has been developed at York University supported by the Canadian Space Agency to obtain accurate, detailed, and collocated measurements of major greenhouse gases from space. This instrument uses Prof. Shan’s patented technology on motion synchronization to tune the gap spacing of the spectrometer’s optics at nanometer level and facilitate the collection of high-resolution spectral climate data from the atmosphere. This instrument has been validated through three successful stratospheric balloon missions in 2016, 2017 and 2023. In this seminar, the development of this instrument and some lessons learned from this project will be presented.

Speaker

Prof. Jinjun Shan is a Full Professor at the Department of Earth and Space Science and Engineering, York University. He received his Ph.D. degree from Harbin Institute of Technology, China, in 2002. He joined York University in 2006 as Assistant Professor of Space Engineering and was promoted to Full Professor in 2016. He had served as the department chair from 2018 to 2023. Prior to his appointment in York, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies (UTIAS) and City University of Hong Kong. Prof. Shan’s research areas include dynamics, control and navigation of autonomous systems, multi-agent systems, smart materials and structures, spacecraft dynamics and control, and space instrumentation. His pioneering work has led to over 200 widely cited publications, including two books, as well as two patents. Prof. Shan’s accomplishments in research and engineering education have seen him recognized with prestigious awards such as a Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), a Fellow of Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), and a Fellow of American Astronautical Society (AAS).