NASA to purchase T-Ray 4000 Terahertz System
Advanced Photonix, Inc.® announced today that it has received a purchase order for a T-Ray 4000(TM) terahertz system from NASA.
Picometrix, LLC, an API company, became involved with NASA shortly after the space shuttle Columbia disaster upon re-entry in 2005. The sprayed-on foam insulation (SOFI) on the external fuel tank was ultimately determined to have caused the Columbia disaster due to pieces breaking off and damaging the leading edge of the left wing at lift-off. As part of the Return-to-Flight program instituted by NASA after the disaster, API has supplied multiple terahertz QA1000 systems to NASA for non-destructive evaluation and quality control of the space shuttle’s external fuel tanks. The QA1000 system has been validated by NASA as a critical pre-flight quality control inspection system for the external fuel tanks on the space shuttle, at the Machoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, LA.. NASA intends to utilize the fourth generation T-Ray 4000(TM) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) to institute a new level of non-destructive evaluation and quality control for the space shuttle itself.
The heart of the T-Ray 4000(TM) is the Pulsed Terahertz Controller. The controller is the most full-featured, self-contained time-domain terahertz (TD-THz) engine in the world. The small size of the T-Ray 4000(TM) and its fiber-coupled sensors fit the needs of NASA very well at KSC due to the sensitive nature of the space shuttle.
Richard (Rick) Kurtz, Chairman and CEO of API, stated, “We are very excited to have the opportunity to continue working with NASA engineers to solve critical quality control problems today, thereby helping to ensure the safety of space travel in the future.”
The T-Ray(TM) 4000 is the new compact, high-resolution, high-speed, high-power, modular product platform. This product platform is designed to be easily adapted to end user and OEM requirements for future on-line quality control, defense, and homeland security applications.
“We believe the T-Ray(TM) 4000 is a major advancement in terahertz technology, and will hasten the day when terahertz based commercial and industrial applications are widely deployed,” added Irl Duling, Director of Terahertz Business Development at Picometrix.