Materion Barr Precision Optics & Thin Film Coatings involvement in important national programs dates back to the early 1970’s. This early work was in support of major US and international astronomy programs at educational and research institutions. Space payloads have incorporated our filters since the late 1970’s. Examples include SAGE II, ERBS and others. In the early 1980’s, we began participating in strategic defense filter R&D projects and filter development for tactical programs currently in third generation production. We also won 9 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) competitively bid contracts for filter development in the 1986 to 1996 time frame with win rates exceeding double the national average. Our company was a key player and perhaps the largest independent filter supplier to the telecom (WDM) device manufacturer market in the late 1990’s.
Space
Barr Precision Optics & Thin Film Coatings has delivered high performance filters to the space instrument community since the late 1970’s. We have filters and coatings in well over 100 flight instruments. Some well-known examples include three different imagers (WFPC2, ACS and WFC3) on Hubble Space Telescope, the SSI camera on the Galileo 14 year mission to Jupiter; both cameras (WAC & NAC) of the Imaging Science Subsystem on the Cassini mission to Saturn - recently extended to 2017 for a total of 20 years in space; all post-Viking US Mars missions; NASA’s lunar mission (LRO) which recently discovered evidence of water on our moon. The last two Landsat satellites carry our filters. We have provided filters for key Japanese and European missions as well. Recently, Barr Precision Optics & Thin Film Coatings has provided filters for several Earth imaging programs such as GeoEye, OrbView and Digital Globe. Imagery from these instruments is used by government agencies and commercial ventures such as Google Earth.
Astronomy
Barr Precision Optics & Thin Film Coatings has provided filters for a very large number of ground based astronomy instruments. Clients include Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA), Gemini Observatory, Southern African Large Telescope (SALT), Keck Observatory (MOSFIRE instrument), National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (Subaru camera), University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy (PanStarrs camera), European Southern Observatory (supporting VLT and LaSilla) and nearly all major university astronomy departments and other institutions.