Optical and Detector Design of the Ocean Color Instrument for the NASA Pace Mission

The Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) on NASA’s Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem mission is a hyperspectral imager with high SNR, precision and dynamic range, and with a very low striping artifact level in the 342-887 nm wavelength range with a spectral resolution of 5 nm in 2.5 nm steps, providing a significant technological advancement over previous ocean imagers. To achieve this, OCI is designed with specialized optical imaging and opto-electronic detection systems that push the boundaries of several state-of-the-art technologies. This paper provides an overview of these systems together with their achieved performances and discussions of their key design challenges.