Colleagues:

Every once in a while we at AEH get a chance to get our hands dirty.  You know, build stuff, install stuff, test stuff, fly stuff…  Here’re a few examples.  The first is a “cryogenic” vacuum test facility for qualification and acceptance testing of ISR focal plane arrays.  AEH designed, built and delivered them to fit into the client’s LN2 bell jar system.

The second is an airborne, gimbal mounted, spectrometer for environmental studies over the Arctic Ocean during mid-winter.  A team at AEH designed and built the gimballed sensor system, installed it (in Alaska) into the flight vehicle (a helicopter) and got FAA certification to fly the system in civil airspace.

Then there are the submicroradian-class adjustable (set-n-forget) fold mirrors for ultra-precise alignment of wavefront bundles.  No cold “weather” here, just high altitudes and awesome vibrations.

AEH is known primarily for analysis, but it’s the non-linear stochastic process of synthesis (better known as design) that makes it all work.  That’s engineering.

I’ll be expanding on this topic in a couple of papers next month at Optics+Photonic in San Diego.

It’s all great fun!

Al H.
7-7-15